Italy - Day 14 - The Vatican

Today was a day we had been looking forward to for most of the trip - our foray into Vatican City.  We had a good night's sleep and had prepared ourselves well for the Vatican Museum, which is so large and complex that it really can't be done without a solid plan of attack.  It also shouldn't be done without an advance ticket purchase.  We picked up ours online and it allowed is to bypass what looked like at least a hour of queuing in the hot sun.  In order to save our energy we also took the metro to the Vatican - our first experience of Rome's public transport.  We give it high marks for clarity, ease of use, efficiency and air-conditioning.  It was quite crowded, but we expected that, and it never felt unsafe.  We'll probably make more use of it in the coming days as our museum legs start to tire.

We pretty much went straight from the train station to the museum, where we joined the early morning crowds.  The Vatican Museum operates a one-way system, so there is a slight downside to getting an early start in that everyone starts at the same place.  Later in the day the crowds have dispersed a little more, but at this point we were pretty much all walking around the Egyptian antiquities together.  There were quite a lot of confused people.

We had planned to spend our time in the Egyptian antiquities room, the Pio-Clementine museum of Roman historical artifacts, the map gallery and, of course, the Sistine Chapel.  Fiona and I both love a good mummy and there was a great one on display, along with some more sarcophagi.  Apparently the early popes thought that hieroglyphics were the language of Adam.  Other statuary had been 'collected' by Roman expeditions into Egypt and scattered across gardens and villas in Rome.  Hadrian had a particularly nice set at his place in Tivoli.  We marvelled for quite some time.  We also were a little flabbergasted by the number of people who seemed to think it was OK to touch the exhibits.  Was it just because they were large and made of marble?  Come on, people, these things are several thousand years old!  Keep your grubby mitts to yourselves!

If we had to pick a favourite exhibit from this section it would probably not even be Egyptian.  As this part of the museum evolved into other Middle Eastern regions we came upon a clay tablet, covered in cuniform writing.  The complexity of the writing and the age of these tablets always amazes us.  This particular one was even more amazing in that it still had its original clay 'envelope'.  To see such an everyday, normal concept represented in a three thousand year old object was quite mind-blowing.  We had to sit down and take a break, which we did in a sunny courtyard.

Our next stop was the Pio-Clementine museum, and if you are thinking, who or when is Pio-Clementine, the name comes from the popes who originally put the exhibits together, or created the space for them to be shown.  There was a lot of that in the museum.  Ancient pagan statues would have the names of popes underneath them, no doubt confusing some of the tourists.  Someone still needs to explain to me why they needed to do this, but they did it nonetheless.

This part of the museum was made up almost entirely of sculpture.  It was the museum experience we had been waiting for the entire trip and it absolutely did not let us down.  There were vast hallways filled with marble - busts of emperors, Greek and Roman gods, children at play and, the highlight for us, the animal room.  The Animal Room was, of course, filled with animals.  Most of them were real and quite recognizable, others a mixture of several different animals.  All were incredibly well done.  The detail was superb.  A prominent theme was lions killing another type of animal.  There were several examples were the claws of the lion ripping into the flesh of the other animal had been very carefully and skillfully carved.  It was little scary.

I think our favourite piece was that of Laocoon, the Trojan priest who tried to warn his people about the dangers of the 'present' left behind by the Greeks.  In order to keep him from blabbing, the Greek protector goddess Athena sent two giant serpents to kill him and his sons.  The statue showed that work in progress.  Then anguish was so visible.  It was a spectacular piece.

We also very much liked a room with two sarcophagi carved from dark marble for the mother and sister of the emperor Constantine.  The details were great, but  did not photograph well due to the dark colour, so no picture.  We did get an amazing shot of the floor, though.  That's the other thing about the Vatican Museum, as well as ogling the exhibits you always have to keep one eye on the floor and one on the ceiling. Nine times out of ten they were just as great as anything in the room.

Having finished the Pio-Clementine part of the museum we set course for the Sistine Chapel by way of the map gallery.  This was a long (several hundred meters) room with more than a dozen large scale and very colorful maps of ancient Italy.  They were in superb shape and a wonder to behold, especially for a me, being somewhat fascinated by maps in the first place.  Passing through the map gallery, we entered a Raphael section of the museum, where entire rooms were decorated with his painted walls.  We especially like one of a room where a statue had been toppled and lay broken on the floor.  Moving at an increased pace now we went through several old papal apartments showing great art work and tapestries.  A lower section had an exhibit on contemporary religious art which we really should have given more time to than we did, but at some point you get caught up with the flow of humanity rushing towards the Sistine Chapel like so many salmon headed up river.  The excitement builds and builds until you round the last corner and pop out into the chapel.  THE ENTIRE ROOM IS JAM PACKED WITH PEOPLE!  There is about a square meter of floor space right at the door, but the rest is wall-to-wall-to-wall people.  And no matter how much the security people yell (yes, yell) for silence and for people to stop taking photos, nothing changes.  If you can get past this, the Chapel is a wonder, but we felt a little let down.  No matter how well you prepare yourself, I'm pretty certain that everyone's first reaction will be - Oh, I thought they would be bigger.  Don't get me wrong, I admire the genius that created them.  In fact, someday, when I'm filthy rich I plan to make a significant donation to the museum on the understanding that we can get an hour alone to admire it in a more peaceful setting.

On the way out of the Sistine Chapel and towards the exit are more exhibits, which I feel sorry for, because most people just blow by them.  The ivory carvings stopped us dead in our tracks.  We both hate the method for collecting the material but can't deny the exquisite beauty of the rendered art.  The detail they can achieve with the medium is beyond anything else.

We also walked past some wonderful stained glass and exhibits on Vatican coinage and postage stamps.  Soon, however, we were back out in the sunshine.  Total museum time, 2.5 hours, which felt a little fast for us.  We did miss one section of the museum that we would rather have seen, but we felt we got a good flavour of most things.

The next exhibit that we wanted to see needed to be edible, as it was well past lunch time.  Fiona looked up nearby restaurants in our guidebook and found a recommendation for Dino & Tony's.  It turned out to be more of an experience than just lunch.  The restaurant was a small hole in the wall with a few tables inside and a bustling staff.  We were greeted and given a seat, but no menus to peruse.  Soon a man came up to us (Dino? Tony?) and asked us if we wanted antipasta.  Specialty of the house, he said, without further explanation.  We just sorted of nodded and he was off.  Minutes later he returned with a small pizza with different toppings, including a really good spinach-gorgonzola combination.  There was also a rocket and mozzarella pastry, some croquettes and a few other tasty morsels.   When we had polished it off he came by again, looked at us and said, "Pasta?".  We said yes and he returned again with a couple of nice bowls of penne with pepper, cheese and bacon.  All very simple and incredibly delicious.  When we were finished with these, he took them away and replaced them with two more bowls of pasta, this one penne again, but with a great, light tomato sauce.  We ate most of it, but unsure where the process would end we decided we should leave a sign that we were getting full and would require no more additional pasta.  They took our plates away, but gave us a slight scolding for not finishing them.

Fiona finished with another speciality of the house - cafe granita.  You get a small coffee glass, filled with shaved ice.  They pour a very strong shot of espresso over it and top it off with whipped cream.  Fiona liked it very much.  So if you are ever in the neighbourhood and are looking for an authentic Roman dining experience, stop by Dino and Tony's.  Just make sure you bring your appetite.

Our next stop was St. Peter's square and Basilica.  The heat of the day was getting to be at its worst and the lineup was long, so Fiona went off to take pictures while I moved along towards the entrance.  While the line was long, it moved quickly so we were soon within the cool confines of the Basilica.  I'm aware that some of my earlier posts on Rome were not altogether positive, and I don't want to get the reputation of a Negative Nelly, so I'm going to start with the things I did like about St. Peter's.

Whatever else you think about it, you have to admit it has a grandiose magnificence that you don't get anywhere else.  It is huge.  It is impressive.  It is rather beautiful, especially with shafts of light beaming down from windows on the cupola.  There were great sculptures to be found everywhere - our friend Bernini had a few himself.  The monument to the Old and Young Pretenders to the British throne was flanked by two amazingly carved angels.  The statue of piety, tucked away behind glass, was astounding.  Each of the papal monuments was artistically breath-taking.  St. Peter's is an absolute must see for anyone in Rome and I am glad we went, even though now I wish I had summoned up the guts to go up to the cupola.

But the one thing you don't get from St. Peter's is the idea that you are in a church.  It really does feel more like a palace built for the King of the Catholics.  It feels like most of the glory is reserved for the individual popes (who commissioned their own monuments) instead of for God, and that's not right.  As a lapsed Catholic, I have to say that I had a glimmer of hope that I would experience something here at the home of the faith that would trigger a response, but I didn't.  I don't blame the people either.  While there were many more of them here than in any other church they visited, we found everyone to be a good deal more respectful.  It's just that, upon leaving, I didn't really get the impression I had spent any time in God's house and that's disappointing.  Maybe it's me.  I don't know.

I don't want to end the post on a down note, because it really was a fabulous day.  The weather was warm and we saw many of great wonders.  Two of my favourites were the icy-cold cokes we had on a terrace on the way back to the train station.  I've never been more appreciative of a cold beverage.  It gave us the will to get back on our horse and make it back to the hotel.  We're spending a lot of time in this 30 degree weather wondering how we're going to cope with 45 degrees in Oman.  I'm pretty sure we're going to have trouble maintaining ourselves as solids and not just melt into a tiny puddle.

By the time we got home and showered, we had completely lost the will to get back out there and find dinner.  So we broke open one of our bottles of Brunello, added some bread, meat and cheese from a nearby grocery store and had dinner in the hotel room while watching the opening game of the European Championships.