We thought we weren’t going to make it.
Naively, we bought tickets to the museum based on the amount of time we expected to spend in St Peter’s, neglecting to remember that there are 551 steps to climb to get to the top. It’s one of the few places to get a view of all of Rome, so of course we were going to do it. Even if we only had 35 minutes until our entry time to the Vatican Museum.
After we got to the top, then rushed back down, we found out that the entrance to the museum is NOWHERE near the basilica. In fact, it’s nearly a mile away! We hoofed it, walking as fast as we could, and made it to the entrance 10 minutes late. As it turns out, they operate on Italian time, so I suspect we would have been fine even if we’d shown up an hour late.
Now, I grew up in CT, not far from New York City. Going to “The Met” was not an unusual weekend activity when I was a kid, so I’m not easily impressed. But, well, this is the Vatican. “More is the new more,” was their motto for, like, 400 years, and it shows.
But there’s one thing that everyone who comes to the Vatican Museum really comes to see: the Sistine Chapel. Don’t get me wrong, this entire place is a literal embarrassment of riches. It’s almost hard to appreciate some of the amazing artwork because every room is jam packed. (Mostly I mean the art, but also tourists… that’s Rome for you.) The only way to get there is to walk through the ENTIRE museum; the shortcuts are a lie. A beautiful, heavily gilded, marble and jewel-encrusted lie, but definitely not an actual shortcut. Once you get there, though…
My one, illicit photograph (click to view larger)
Of course you’re not allowed to take pictures. I get it. Flash would destroy what has been so painstakingly restored, and if that’s half the reason people come, then you want to keep it a bit more under wraps. It is the sole job of several men to stand around and yell at people who missed all the signs telling them not to take pictures. One older gentleman had a booming voice that echoed through the entire chapel, “NO FOTO!” Strangely, it’s one of the things I’ll remember most about the trip.
The chapel was crowded, with everyone doing their level best to speak in hushed tones, discussing all the brilliant detail. It’s a challenge to pick out the meaning of some of the images because all the characters are wearing the garb of the time, so you have to look for clues in other ways. And to think this was Michelangelo’s first professional gig as a painter!
I suppose it makes sense to put the Sistine Chapel at the very end. Nothing else looks quite as impressive after you’ve seen it. I’m fairly certain I saw things after we left the chapel, but I don’t have a single image to prove that. Except the spiral staircase leading out of the museum, which was fabulous and seems like a great way to end this post.
It starts out smooth and then the stairs become more pronounced as you go down.