I'm not Catholic, but....

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Trip Start Jun 17, 2009 Previous
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  Vatican City, Lazio, Italy
Monday, August 3, 2009

I'm not Catholic, but what would a trip to Rome be without a trip to the Vatican? My friends and I decided to go on a tour of the Vatican, in part because we could have someone tell us what we were looking at, and in large part because being a part of a tour meant that we got to skip the lines and just make our way through the city. 

We started at the Vatican Museum.  From the museum, you can see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, as well as the grass that Tom Cruise ran on in the Vatican scene of MI:III.  Apparently Tom Cruise made a joke about erecting a basilica dedicated to Scientology that didn’t go over very well!  Anyway, as we made our way through the Vatican museum, I began to realize how many replicas of famous statues and paintings exist in the world.  For example, there is a replica of Michelangelo’s statue of Mary and Jesus at Jesus’ death at the beginning of the Vatican Museum, while the real statue is behind glass in St. Peter’s Basilica.  Also, while walking though the museum, we were able to see a replica of The Last Supper. 

While in the Vatican Museum, we saw many of the sculptures that inspired both Michelangelo sculptures and his Sistine Chapel painting.  Michelangelo was obsessed with the human form, and considered it a perfect form, so when he found statues that accurately replicated the form, he studied them intensely.  We saw a statue of a Greek god that Michelangelo considered to have nearly perfect hands, so the hand of that statue was used as inspiration for Adam’s arm in the Sistine chapel.  Next to that sculpture is the head of Zeus, which was used as the face of God on the Sistine chapel.  We also saw the statue of a torso that inspired the Thinker statue that most people are familiar with. 

After the museum, we made our way to the Sistine Chapel.  It is truly awe-inspiring to consider that Michelangelo had never painted before he was asked by the Pope to paint the ceiling of the Chapel.  It is also awe-inspiring to think that one person painted something so huge while spending most of his time on his back, without the greater perspective of the size and scale of the ceiling.  I didn’t realize how many individual paintings there are on the ceiling, since only the picture of Adam and God is publicized.  However, we learned that Michelangelo painted the story of the beginning - basically the story told in Genesis.    

After the Sistine Chapel, the tour was pretty much over, so we made our way out to St. Peter’s Square, where the Pope can look out onto the faithful during his addresses.  Directly behind where the Pope stands is St. Peter’s Basilica, so we took a look inside.  We did not go to see the Grotto where the Popes are buried, but we did look around inside.  The ceiling is amazing, the altar over the Grotto is awesome, and the combination of detail and opulence throughout the church is something that is hard to describe.  The Michelangelo statute of Mary and Jesus is honestly much less impressive when it is behind glass, but the fact that it is an original Michelangelo coupled with the fact that the statue is of Mary and Jesus when Mary gets a flash of foresight to Jesus’ death makes it a remarkable statue. 

At the end of the day, Vatican City is something that I recommend going to see, especially if you are planning on taking a guided tour!

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Raphael paintings	Replica of the Last Supper	Body of the Thinker	Face of God
Adam's arm	Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel	St. Peter's Square	Entrance to St. Peter's Basilica
Alter over the Grottoes	Vatican guards?	Grottoes + main altar

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