The Vatican

Photoblog

The Vatican is a damn cool place. I don’t know if that is an inappropriate thing to say of a very spiritual place, but I’m not religious so I feel secure saying it. Besides, it’s primarily a cool place because the Popes stole all the marble and pillars from Roman structures. So they shouldn’t be judging.

Here is how St. Peters Basilica appears in the skyline across the river Tevere.

A closer look standing in St. Peter’s Square.

We figured it was from one of these two windows that the Pope addresses the people who gather in St. Peter’s Square.

You have to get past the Swiss Guard to gain entry into the Basilica. I found a good tickle to the side stomach area was the best approach.

It’s so difficult to get good photographs in a dark church with an everyday digital camera and a bad photographer. I almost didn’t want to post these because it doesn’t capture the enormity and grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica, but it should give somewhat of an idea.

The impressive 29 meter high canopy above the high alter. That’s the Holy Spirit there in the background shining through.

Now we are underneath the Basilica at the final resting place of everybody’s favorite recently departed Pope, John Paul II. There are lots of dead Popes down here and in the Basilica itself. A lot of death in general abound. By far, the coolest was the Tomb of St. Peter himself but it was situated behind a plate of glass that made photographs impossible. People were kissing the ground around here a lot.

Next, we climbed the massive dome designed by Michelangelo. We were almost walking sideways by the time we got to the top.

These are views from the dome into Vatican City itself… the second smallest country in the world.

Now we move into the Vatican museums. I am not normally an art fan, but our tour guide was fantastic and we all really got a good appreciation of what we were looking at.

This is a very famous original 1st century BC sculpture depicting Laocoon and his sons being killed after attempting to warn the citizens that the Trojan Horse was really not a gift.

The Belvedere Torso. Another famous 1st century BC piece. It is said that studying this sculpture led Michelangelo to change his entire way of thinking about the human form.

The Round Room. This bronze statue of Hercules is in bad shape because it was found buried. Apparently it had been struck by lightening and since even statues were considered to have souls, it needed to be buried after being killed. The cooler thing in this room though, I thought, was the massive red basin you can kind of see in the lower right. It is one solid chunk of red Porphyry marble, which is now extinct. On a tour of the Forum our guide said that two small pillars made of this marble were valued at about 40 Million US. I’m pretty sure there was more marble in this basin than there was in those pillars.

It was the maps in this room that were supposed to be the attraction, but the ceiling was just so much cooler.

This was probably our tour guide’s favorite thing in the Vatican. It’s a fresco by Raphael called The School of Athens and it has all the major scholars and philosophers from antiquity. You can find Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Socrates, and even Raphael himself. There is also a tribute to Michelangelo in here even though the two never got along.

Speaking of Michelangelo, our tour ends in the Sistine Chapel. You are not supposed to take pictures in this room and I wasn’t planning on it, but everybody else was. I got caught both times I took photos, but they didn’t take my camera or anything. I don’t have a lot to say about these paintings other than you really get a feeling that you are looking at something amazing when you stand in that room.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

The Last Judgement