Rome Part Two - Exploring the Vatican

After spending a few days exploring Rome, we left the country (well, technically) to take a tour of the Vatican. We had heard that the Vatican gets very crowded, so we pre-booked an official guided tour before arriving in Italy. We highly recommend this. We arrived at the Vatican Museum entrance at 8:45AM and the line was already hundreds of people long. Our taxi driver told us the line wasn't long yet, and it would stretch much further later in the morning. Since we pre-purchased tickets we were able to go right up to the group entrance and we were through security and met with our guide within 10 minutes.

Our guide, Maria, was very knowledgeable and also quite funny. The museum was packed with people, so she helped us to "conquer the space" and complimented us on how well we stood our ground against other tour groups. Maria was sassy and we could tell she thought some of the teachings of the church, and its past actions, were less than noble. We were all given ear pieces, so we could hear Maria clearly even with the masses of people. We hadn't seen these before, but we would see them later on the trip on tours in Florence and Pompeii. They're really a great development, as tour guides can speak in a normal voice instead of having to shout to be heard.

The Vatican Museums hold some of the great works of Western art. None of it is labeled very well, which is yet another reason to book a tour ahead of time. You could literally spend days here, so consider a tour guide if you just want the highlights. Our tour took us through the Pio Clementino Museum, the Gallery of the Candelabra, the Gallery of the Tapestries, the Gallery of the Geographical Maps and Raphael’s Rooms, before wrapping up at the Sistine Chapel. The bulk of the museum has an amazing collection of classical statues and mosaics, housed in halls rich with renaissance paintings and frescoes. We were particularly impressed by Raphael's frescoes, the 2000 year old Laocoön and his sons statue, the elaborate tapestries, and the hall of maps.

St. Peter's Square, the heart of the Vatican.

The Vatican museum entrance is on the north side of the Vatican's wall. This is only a small portion of the crowd that had gathered before 9AM.

Our guide, Maria, explaining the Sistine Chapel.

The dome of St. Peter's from inside the Vatican compound.

Closeup of the Apollo Belvedere statue.

Laocoön and his sons

An ancient Roman mosaic of David's resting bitch face...

A lot of the hallways are works of art themselves, but they're sometimes hard to enjoy with all of the crowds.

Just a chubby little baby with a goose!

The Popes really amassed a huge collection of classical and Renaissance art over the centuries.

The hall of tapestries, with a momentary free space before the next giant tour group.

Some of the incredible detail on the huge wall tapestries. These would take years to complete.

Julius Caesar getting his comeuppance!

David in the hall of maps.

A map of Italy painted on the wall.

Painting of Venice.

I think everyone liked the map room!

"The School of Athens," a huge wall painting by Raphael, from 1509-1511.

Raphael included his own face in the painting - the only figure looking at the viewer.

Our guide Maria left us just before entering the Sistine Chapel, as tours aren't allowed inside. The paintings on the Sistine Chapel are amazing, but it's so packed with people that you can't totally enjoy it. Occasionally the guard yells out for silence, or a recorded message plays in a few languages demanding silence, but the crowd noise persists. The feeling is that of being herded.

After leaving the Sistine Chapel, we took the shortcut into the area beside St. Peter's basilica, rather than exiting back out the Vatican museum main entrance. St. Peter's is an impressive structure, with a massive interior, every inch of which is lavishly decorated. It's a huge and breathtaking space. The construction and decoration of St. Peter's certainly had a huge contribution to art and architecture, but also a massive amount of money was spent that could have been spent on other things, especially given the supposed humanitarian mission of the Catholic church. I guess it's the same with any piece of grand religious architecture, but St. Peter's is a little more over the top than most.

We also ventured down in to the crypt, where several popes are buried. Some of them were moved from the catacombs outside the city. We also thought about climbing to the top of the dome, but there was a one hour wait to buy tickets, so we skipped it.


The line to climb the dome was over an hour long.

St. Peter's is pretty stunning! Here's a bonus video of the interior.

David's family in St. Peter's.

Paul and his Mom in St. Peter's.

The gigantic dome of St. Peter's.

Swiss Guard

The Vatican museums and St. Peter's are obviously a must visit in Rome, with their priceless collections of art and historic buildings. We actually had a discussion about how much St. Peter's is worth, and guessed it's in the trillion dollar range.

After finishing up at the Vatican, we were starving and walked to the nearby Pizzarium Bonci, which we had seen on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's The Layover. In general, we saw two main styles of pizza in Italy - Roman and Neapolitan. I guess that makes sense since we traveled mostly in Rome and Naples! The Neapolitan type is ubiquitous, and is what we got in sit-down restaurants. The crust is relatively thin, but not crispy, with thick edges, and not overloaded with sauce or toppings. You eat it with a knife and fork. The Roman style pizza we had is usually ordered at a counter and individual rectangular pieces are cut using scissors. You pay by weight, and can eat it with your hands. Pizzarium Bonci is a great example of Roman style pizza, and some of the best pizza we had on the trip thanks to the great crust and high quality toppings. We particularly enjoyed one with sautéed onions and another with pine nuts and peppers.

Pizzarium Bonci

You pick what kind you want and they cut you a slice.

David with his pizza.

Yum!

After eating, we took a taxi back to the apartment. We should mention that it's not easy to just hail a taxi from the street anywhere in Rome. We used the MyTaxi app, which was extremely useful. When we got back Paul's sister and brother-in-law, Betsy and Chad, had just arrived. After relaxing for a bit we walked around Trastevere to introduce them to the neighborhood. We came across an old lady who had gotten her car stuck on a curb, and we helped to pick up the car and put it back down on the street. I wish we had pictures! I guess it's helpful that cars in Europe are so tiny. We did note that most cars in Italy have a lot of scratches and dents. With the narrow streets and packed traffic, it's hard to keep a car in good shape. We walked back to the apartment and got ready for an Italian cooking class - but that will be the subject of another blog post. :)