Rome - page 8

May 24nd

The Vatican

 

Today I was going to do the Vatican.  The place is so big, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican museum have different subway stops.  Saint Peter’s Basilica is the principal church of Catholicism.  It is the largest and the church most used by the pope:

 

If Christ was alive, he’d probably live here

That’s not bad for a fast patch job if I say so myself

 

Bernini designed St. Peter’s Square so that 400,000 people that could all simultaneously have a view of the pope.  That Egyptian obelisk in the center belonged to Caligula and probably blocks the view for at least a few hundred hypothetical pope-watchers.

Speaking of Bernini, I just found this closeup of the Rape of Proserpine (remember, my picture came out blurry).  It really does a good job of capturing the detail he put into his sculptures:

 

 

For some reason they have a very particular entry path set up that channels you around and about the whole Basilica before you can go in.  Along the way you go under the church and see a whole gallery of buried popes.  A group of people have set up camp around John Paul II’s tomb to pray (and scowl at anyone who tries to walk around them).

There were a couple of clowns (er - Swiss guards) right before we went inside. 

 

Swiss Guards                                                              Hot Dog on a Stick girls

 

For some reason these guys were scolding the tourists taking photos of them.  The tourists kept on taking photos but they didn’t do anything more than just wave their hands about a bit, spout some frustrated Italian and look stern, so I’m not sure what they were upset about.  Maybe it’s just the hot-dog-on-a-stick uniforms they have to wear and the fact that the real Vatican guards, the guys with guns and navy blue uniforms, wander around where they can be seen and really make these guys look like fools.  Or maybe they are from Zurich (zing!).

 

After the run-around I finally got inside.  Yeah, it’s big.  In a slightly arrogant demonstration, they’ve got a line running the floor of the nave.  It is marked by little stars that measure the length of other ‘major’ churches of the world.  This is just so you can see how much bigger St. Peter’s is by comparison.

 

The sights included an early Michelangelo sculpture and a cool Bernini tomb.

 

The sculpture, La Pieta, was behind glass and entirely too far away to really see properly, but looking at this wikipedia photo, it’s actually pretty nice.

In the tomb of Pope Alexander VII you can see the skeletal Death, caught up in the folds of fabric but thrusting forth his hourglass

 

Also on display were, a wax-preserved pope (John XXIII), a Bernini alter made from bronze stolen from the Pantheon and some great popes as superheroes:

 

 

Nanna nanna nanna nanna Pope-Man!

 

 

 

 

Looking down the length of the nave, you can see the partitions set up around the measuring line.  Way down at the end is Bernini’s Gloria, which appears to use translucent amber colored stones to very nice effect.

 

Benediction of Tony

 

Right around the time I was walking past the main alter, underneath the Dome, I felt something on my shoulder.  I looked up and discovered it was just a little bit of God dripping down on me. 

This next painting was so silly I wanted to make some clever caption for it, but it was so sad I found I was unable.  I guess that’s true for senility in general.

 

St. Jerome gets his last communion from St. Paul (I didn’t realize it but apparently this is a mosaic)

 

At one point I made a b-line for an exclusive looking room.  A guard indicated that this room was for prayer only.  I assured him that was why I was going in.  So, when I got inside I prayed.  Not something I was planning to do, but hey, I was in St. Peter’s Basilica.  Getting out was the hard part.  I looked really solemn, touched my nose and then slipped out.

 

Just as the crowds were beginning to obstruct all movement I was back outside and looking for the stairs to the ‘cupola’, the very top of the dome.  The first stop was a balcony at the base of the dome where I took this picture on the left before slipping up through a narrow passage squeezed between the inner and outer layers of the dome wall. 

 

From the balcony                                                                                Between the domes

 

It was hot and cramped near the top and as people began to accumulate on both sides I was praying that a fat old person hadn’t died and become wedged up ahead.  Luckily nobody died and I made in onto the very small cupola.

 

View of St. Peter’s Square

 

From here you can see the Tiber river and Castel St.Angelo (at the end of the road on the left) and I think that is the Pantheon off on the right in the distance.  There is a secret passage linking the castle to the Vatican so whenever barbarians sacked the Vatican the pope could escape to safety.  Apparently this happened more than once.  The most famous time was in 1527, which was well within the Renaissance and really shook a lot of people up (including Michelangelo) who were under the impression they had left the dark ages behind them. This was a shining moment for the Swiss Guard, the bulk of whom were massacred to the last man buying the Pope time to make his getaway.

So that about does it for St. Peter’s Basilica.  There are gardens, but I could see them all from the cupola and they didn’t really look worthy of a tour.  The next logical stop was the Vatican museum.  I had been told to give the museum an entire day, but the benefit of traveling alone is that you can see and do twice as much as you would with just one other person weighing you down, three times what you would with two other people and four times as much as you would with just a group of three other people.  The point is, I did the Vatican museum after St. Peter’s, and then I went through the museum a second time just because I missed something (the Etruscans!).

 

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