Italy, September 2018 (Part 3 - Vatican City)
Audrey and I on Wednesday around 7 AM to get ready for our tour of the Vatican. Unlike the Colosseum, the Vatican is DEFINITELY something you want to get the tickets and a tour guide for in advance.
We looked on TripAdvisor for the best one we could find and stumbled upon the Skip the Line Vatican Tour by Gray Line Rome for a little over $60 each.
Although you can book an option that will pick you up from a hotel, we opted to just meet our tour guide at the rendezvous point at Bar L’Ottagono right across from the Vatican walls. This option is cheaper and, unless they pick up from your specific hotel, it’s just more convenient to go straight to the Vatican than going to another hotel first.
We met our tour guide, Davide, at 8:30 after which we headed to the entrance to the Musei Vaticani, the Vatican’s private art collection.
The museum itself does not open until 9 AM, but since we were part of a tour group we were able to get access before the general public.
We walked past the long line of people waiting just to get in. This alone was worth the price of the tour. Like with the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, you must pass through a security check point to get into the Vatican.
Going to the Vatican on Wednesday’s has its pros and cons. The biggest downside is that on every Wednesday, the Pope hosts what is known as the Papal Audience in St. Peter’s Basilica. During the audience, the basilica is closed off to the public until 12:30 which means it was not be part of our tour.
One positive note however is that the Papal Audience ensured that the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel were relatively uncrowded or at least as uncrowded as one of the holiest places in the world can be.
The Vatican Museum is a massive structure spanning several stories and dozens of kilometers of floor space. It rivals the Louvre and Hermitage Museum in terms of sheer size, and with over 5 million annual tourists, it is also one of the most visited museums in the world.
Despite what your opinions about religion are, the Vatican is truly a testament to the power and decadence of the church.
At the height of it’s powers, the church commissioned the greatest artists in the world at the time to help create entire buildings which are in and of themselves works of art.
I couldn’t help but be amused by the conflict in tone of the Catholic Church. In one hand, the founder of the Church, Jesus, was a champion of frugality and humility. In the other is the Church as it has stood for centuries, spending untold quantities of money so that the Pope has somewhere nice to live.
Nevertheless, the feats that these artists were able to accomplish is nothing short of remarkable. The fact that the world’s greatest artists were working on this project simultaneously pushed one another into working at their absolute best and it really does show. Michelangelo painted the entirety of the Sistine Chapel by himself over a four year period creating depicting several scenes from the bible, most famously “The Creation of Adam.”
Unfortunately, photography inside the Sistine Chapel is strictly prohibited. Of course this doesn’t stop certain people from sneaking in a picture. There are numerous guards roaming the area however, and the threat of being removed from the Vatican, as well as having our camera confiscated, was more than enough to keep me from even trying to get some photos of the inside.
Once our tour of the Vatican Museum ended, Davide walked our group to St. Peter’s Square where we had to cross an armed checkpoint to get into the area. Overall we couldn’t help but notice that there is a constant military presence throughout the city. On any given day, armed carabinieri’s, or Italy’s military police, are found near most major landmarks.
This escalated military presence is due in part to anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments that have arisen in Italy as several thousand refugees from northern Africa have crossed the Mediterranean to try to seek a better life in Italy.
Like in the United States, right wing groups such as the Lega Party and the Five Star Movement have gained power under a banner of populism, using Italy’s weak economy and deep seeded racism to turn people against immigrants, claiming these refugees are “take their jobs,” or worse yet “harm their families.”
Davide told us a little bit about St. Peter’s Square before concluding our tour right around noon at the official Vatican souvenir shop because capitalism and religion go hand in hand.
The basilica was set to reopen 30 minutes later but our plans to go in were dashed when we realized the line to enter was close to a mile long at this point.
