Italy 13 - Vatican City - Fin

Another early morning with less sleep than I'd needed, but I had a coke in the fridge and high hopes for the day, so we set off early for the Vatican. Our crew had slowly dwindled, and today we were just myself and my parents. We took a cab (thank God) and met up with our tourguide at 8.30am across the street from the Vatican Museum. This was a very specific tour guide, his tour covered all the ins and outs of the group entrance, the ticket counters, and the stairs to the final check-in gate. Essentially, it's legalized scalping. He gets their cut, the Vatican gets their cut, and the authorities get their cut... but it also means we don't have to wait in a 1-2hr line, and when in Rome.... 

The Vatican museum is an amazing collection of artifacts from all over the world, donated by various countries, churches, and ridiculously wealthy popes throughout the years. Far far far too many artifacts. They don't even bother writing up a blurb on 90% of them, there's just a catalog number. Probably. I would bet a large percentage of my net worth even they don't know all the works of art they own. But many of them are really cool. After we checked out the Fontana de Pigna, the courtyard named for the giant [2nd century] statue of a pinecone inexplicably adorning the one end, we headed off to check out the wing of all the Egyptian artifacts. This was seriously cool, artifacts from ~1500BC -> 200AD, sarcophagi, statues, tablets, even a few mummies and jars for all the organs of the mummies (Bonus fact: When they were rushed they didn't bother removing all the organs, but they still put the jars in the tombs to pay homage to the various deities who expected to receive those organs). There was another room that looked to be all Egyptian artifacts, but it was actually full of roman knockoffs that some emperor used to decorate one of his gardens, including a statue of Osiris whose face was modeled on his prematurely-deceased son's. To round off the section, there were some Babylonian artifacts, busts and text from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, including a cuneiform tablet wrapped in clay, which had cuneiform and seals upon that - ensuring that the message reached the recipient without any (undetectable, at least) eavesdropping. As a Snow Crash fan, that particularly stood out to me.

Organ jars!

Babylonian Tablets

At this point we realized the museum only really had one main path through it, and everyone was doing the Egyptian region along with us. However, here we came to a fork - we can continue to the roman section, or we could hit the Etruscan section and see the pre-roman artifacts. "We could speed-run some pots"  we decided. And that's essentially what we did. There were was some cool jewelry, pieces of chariots, bronze spears, "Spits" whatever those are (oh duh, they're skewers for cooking), a shield... and then pots. So many pots. Oil pots, food pots, decorative pots, vase pots... speedrun was the right choice. We didn't even take the "more pots and vases" branch.  The pots looked very Grecian, which makes sense since they were contemporaries.

A mere fraction of the animals

After our pot detour, we headed into the roman statuary hall. This was also simply overwhelming. One of the most fun sections was the two rooms filled with animal sculptures. Large small, foreign, domestic, single, mid-attack, hundreds of animals. And, of course, busts everywhere. Even mixed into other rooms, or art rooms, just throw some ancient busts on the wall, why not.  My favorite sculpture room would be the pantheon-inspired room. Featuring a giant red porphyry bowl (originally Nero's bath, stolen from the ruins of the town center we'd explored a few days prior in authentic roman fashion), the circular room had a domed roof painted in a near-replica of the pantheon, a mosaic floor lifted wholesale from a mansion, while statues of Roman gods filled all alcoves around the perimeter. After seeing so many places where they should have stood but didn't, it was cool to finally see them for real.  The octagonal courtyard was another standout, it was Pope Julius  II's favorites and personal collection, and they were incredibly well done. Super deep and intricate carving on various statues and tomb covers, surrounding an open courtyard with a fountain in the center, it stood out even among a sea of masterpieces.

Then came the art rooms. I'm not a big art guy, so I started taking pictures of floors, because I love some good pattern mosaic. See my standalone post for more on this. I think we went through the Borgias apartments or something at this point, lots of frescos and intricately painted ceilings,  but the caffeine was fading, my lack of food was showing, and I the art was all blurring together. Plus, my mom was getting excited for the crown jewel so we were distracted by that too. Almost there. But then came the tapestry rooms. Incredible work, they took 50 women 3 years to embroider - each - but rugs really don't do it for me.  Almost there! But then came the map room, another 100 yard hallway, this time filled with maps. It was cool to Pompeii go missing between the "Italy in antiquity" and "Italy now" maps, but it all felt like distractions at this point. Almost there, and the crowd knew it. And then came the modern art rooms. A giant Matisse. Still boring. Dalis, good but paled compared to what we just saw, feels like they're just wasting time now. Some room full of Modern art - projected video of people walking. They've got to be messing with us. Finally, we finally arrived. The main goal for today. The Sistine chapel.

Not my picture, I wasn't getting yelled at

It was great. It was doubly great because they had seats. You weren't allowed to talk or take pictures, but everyone's seen photographs of the Sistine chapel, and tbh you get a better view in those pictures than you do IRL. There are SO MANY individual panels, none of them can be massive. But it was absolutely fun to see them all, with so many others who were so enraptured.  It felt like a pilgrimage for a religion I don't believe in - I guess the Church of Michelangelo. Great work, and I could follow all the saints and bible stories, and the the central picture is absolutely a masterpiece that outclasses almost all other paintings I've ever seen... but I'm not a painting guy and imho it wasn't worth the 4 hours of hiking that most of the people in the room did just to see this one chapel.  But I took in the details and legit enjoyed it while I waited for mom to listen to an entire podcast. I'm not about to rush her through the crux of a pilgrimage.

The rest of the Vatican museum was meh. It wasn't the same caliber as the beginning highlights, and it's hard for anything to hold up after the Sistine chapel, especially when it's stamps or coins or whatever. Plus the crash I was putting off came back, hard. We headed to the cafeteria and got some cold meh pizza and some cold coke, but I was still not feeling it.  So what did we do? Got back in line for the Basilica! We'd scoped out the Sistine->Basilica shortcut, but since our tour-guide had abandoned us at the entrance, we would have to sneak into another tourgroup. Unfortunately, the only security guard diligently doing his job was posted at that door, precisely because he knew people like us were looking at it longingly.

So we went out the main gate, around the corner, into the sun, and got into the hour-long line. The Vatican plaza is pretty cool. Massive columns surrounding the center obelisk (which was stolen from Egypt, moved to Rome, watched Christians burned alive as a half-time show during chariot races on this site, and is now topped with a cross, a proper Christian monument). The whole scene looks awesome with the basilica in the center overlooking it all.  Speaking of, the reason St Peter's Basilica is here at all is because The apostle Peter was martyred here in this plaza for spreading the word, and buried on the hill behind it. As Christianity became more widespread and accepted, they first built a church on this site, then built the basilica around the church, before disassembling the interior church and continuing to improve the basilica.  I heard all this while I shuffled through the bright sunny shadeless line while sleep deprived, sore, edgy, and verging on heatstroke. And then I was called upon, half an hour into this self flagellation, to demonstrate the Peace of Christ and not punch a dude in the face as he cut in line ahead of me.

Thankfully, as soon as I stepped into the basilica itself he was instantly out of my mind, because the basilica is baller. This felt like a holy pilgrimage, which came as a total surprise since I'm not Catholic. We split up and wandered the basilica on our own, and I was basically in awe the whole time. The basilica is huge. Something like 200 yards long and 100 yards high, it barely even feels like a building. It's like being inside a mountain, and throughout the mountain are giants. Statues of saints and popes, including some you've grown up reading about in church,  all at least double life size. At the head of the church, flanked by beckoning popes, is an empty throne waiting for Christ to return, while the sun bursts through the stained glass behind, decorated with the dove of the holy spirit descending to earth.  And it's all fabulously well done, designed by the masters, fabricated with no expense spared.  I've been in a lot of churches, a lot of cathedrals, and this one hit me like no other. Plus, I love some good marble.

We exited through the crypts, where the tombs of the popes (including Peter at the center of the church) are on display, and made our way outside. There was a penny-smasher, which excited me because I used to collect them as a kid, but I didn't have a euronickel, and the nearby vendor didn't have a euronickel, so I was gonna give up and just be sad. But my dad went and bought a couple nickels from a more distant vendor for a quarter and saved the day! And then we tried to figure out what to do next, and ended up saving they day for the next family who was struggling with the same struggle. Anyways. Now that the caffeine was hitting and having cooled off in the Vatican, I wasn't quite as dead, and the day was still kinda young. So we decided to hit the fort we'd seen on the cab ride over. (Cab rides are still awesome. They don't follow the route uber says they should at all, they pass on the shoulder, they slam on the brakes while cutting off a bus because someone stepped out into the street without looking... great fun). 

Castello San Angelo. It looked old and looked like it had great views, and google said it was only a 7 minute walk (which was one of our main criteria). It was pretty great too. Originally built as a mausoleum for Hadrian, the building which was started in 100AD has evolved continuously since then. The line was sunny but quick, and we were into the shade and inside in about 5 minutes. You enter the castle through the ancient entryroom, and then wind 30' upwards around a long helical ramp (that's 2000 years old) to the mausoleum itself. This room was inset into the ground, but in the renovation from mausoleum to fortress, they put a drawbridge over this room, so that they could seal off the upper levels of the castle from invaders, while being able to shoot down at any fool who attempted to build their own bridge across the gap. Growing upward, the next expansion of the castle replaced the garden on top of the castle with a keep. This keep was filled with exhibits showing the armory of the castle (I finally learned how open-breech cannons work! I feel like I could build one...), and dioramas explaining how the mausoleum/castle grew over time.  The next level up featured rooms from when the castle became a refuge for the pope. A protected escape tunnel was built from the Vatican to the fort, so that the pope could flee to this highly-defensible position when under siege, which meant that the castle needed highly-appointed rooms, with fancy fireplaces acquired from other palaces, and excessive amounts of painted ceilings and such. I'd already had my fill of such, but mom liked it, so that's cool. The next level featured a restaurant and some amazing views, and the roof had great views. The colosseum was in the distance, the Tiber in the foreground, and the Vatican front and center, while Archangel Michael was on the roof, a giant statue sheathing his sword (he was seen thusly, here, in a vision by the pope signifying the end of the black death. And his statue has been here ever since, except when it was destroyed by sacking, fires, or lightning as it has been five times so far.)  The trip back down the fortress included a trip around the outer walls, where the defensibility of the castle really sunk in. Overlapping fields of fire, interior and exterior motes that were exceptional killing fields, and a sprinkling of catapults (and literal thousands of stone balls for them) and castellation  mixed in for good measure. On my recommendation list for Rome I think I'd go 1) St Peters 2) colosseum 3) Pantheon 4) St Angelo 5) Forum 6) Sistine chapel. But that's very biased by my appreciation for old architecture and good rocks. 

At this point our legs and feet were dead. They'd been iffy to start off the day, the tape which protected my ankle was bruising my arch, and we were 5 miles in (on top of the 90 or so from the last two weeks). So we took a cab home, cleaned up, and went out for dinner. Burned out and having feasted on Italian to our hearts content, we got burgers and beer. At a gay bar. We didn't know it was a gay bar, but everyone there was either obviously a tourist, or obviously gay - including the waiters. Burgers were great though.

One more early morning, and we get on a plane tomorrow. Maybe I'll come up with a classy conclusion mid flight, or maybe we'll end this trip to my motherland by saying: It was great, I'm glad it's over, and now I have to pack for the next adventure.