Another blue-sky day, and we spent it nearly entirely indoors, but what an indoors – the Vatican Museum. Even if the only thing open to the public were the Sistine Chapel, that would be enough. But of course, there’s much, much, much more inside – millions of items when you total all the documents, paintings, frescoes, busts, statues, tapestries, rings, scepters, tiled floors and the rest.
It feels like we took photographs of a couple hundred thousand of those items during our four hours inside. Throughout the tour you’re guided through countless galleries and halls, all the while being told the Sistine Chapel is this way or that. You follow the arrows, which almost act as “teasers” for what’s to come.
Eventually, you arrive in the Chapel, which turns out to be much larger than either of us had anticipated. But since that’s where all the church’s cardinals gather to elect the Pope, it can’t be a small place. As the audio program suggests, when you’re there, you’re at the pinnacle of western art – as good as it gets. (Of course, that’s the one place in the museum where photography isn’t allowed; photos are OK without flash elsewhere.) Irving Stone’s “The Agony and the Ecstasy” is probably worth re-reading now that we’ve seen the results of Michelangelo’s arduous labors painting on scaffolding 60 feet above the Chapel’s floor day after day for years.
Our posted photographs don’t come close to doing justice to any of the displays, but as your humble traveling servants, we offer them up for your possible enjoyment.
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