Being the good Catholic that I am, I was utterly awestruck by all of it, and felt a certain sense of pride for my religion's ability to create such beauty (granted that most of it came about because of corruption, thats besides the point :P). None the less after seeing such wonders it is impossible to say that religion does not have its good points, one of which being art.
On the first day myself and 2 other friends went to the Vatican Museums to see all of the art and the Sistine Chapel. We had gotten our tickets the day before on a slight whim, which turned out to be the best idea ever! We started out our tour going into a large courtyard, and we had no idea where to start, so we picked a random hallway. That hallway was a good 100 yards long and all throughout it there were literally hundreds of marble statue heads from the Roman and Greek era. We quickly realized that there was so much, and we had no idea what all of it was, but we were liking every second of it. we slowly worked our way down the hall to another wing of the Museum, where we found more complete statues from the Greek and Roman era. As our minds were being overwhelmed with not knowing what things where our friend David showed that he knew some about art from his art history class in high school. This came in handy the rest of the day as he was able to point out the really famous pieces and give us some background. This helped end some of our confusion, but the shear amount of art still left us breathless. We continued down this second hallway where we found the Augustus di Prina Porta, which is the most famous statue of Augustus in just about the world, and it is in pristine condition. And for our pictures the light was streaming down on his face just right making him look even more majestic then he was already.
OH! By the way, everyone told us you cant take pictures in the Vatican Museums. LIES!!!! ALL LIES!!!!! You can take pictures everywhere in the Museums except in the Sistine Chapel.
Back to the art. after finding this masterpiece we continued down the rest of the hallway finding other wonderful pieces of art, including gods, and other famous Romans, and there was even a famous one of the Nile River.
After finishing with this hallway we went back the way we came to be able to move to the next area of the tour. We came into a courtyard where we found a statue, that is very famous, made by greeks called
Laocoön. It is a statue of the guy who tried to tell the trojans not to fall for the Trojan horse being eaten by snakes (the gods really wanted the greeks to win). Anyhow the are of it was just fantastic. We moved on into another room, where honestly things just start to blur together, there was SO much art! We did find some very cool statues of gods and emperors, and other cool people, but none stick out in my mind enough to rant about them long enough to post it. At this point out minds are just being blown. We came down another hallway and it was full of tapestry from what looked like the middle ages, then after that came the map room which is filled on all sides with detailed maps of Italy and its cities. We even found a papal insignia made of cut marble, so not just a mosaic but cut marble, inlaid in the floor. It was even so detailed it had the tasseled rope connected the keys of the papacy inlaid as well.
So yeah. then we hit the big boys. We entered into the Raphael rooms where it was not just pictures on the wall as we expected, but the walls themselves where the paintings. Take for example my favorite, the School of Athens, which i had thought was a painting, but no, its a whole wall! This went on for about 3 or 4 rooms, all with stunning detail and done so well it looked as if the painted figures where going to jump out of the wall and interact with us. After this there was only the contemporary art gallery before the Sistine Chapel, needless to say we walked very fast through and ignored that gallery, as compared to the others it was lack luster.
Then the gods descended down from the heavens in the room called the Sistine Chapel. I have heard people say numerous times that the chapel is smaller then you expect, full of tourists, and not that impressive. The only account that was right on was the amount of tourists. The room was huge! everywhere you looked it was just a giant piece of art. There were frescoes of popes around the edge and all looked so life-like that it was hard to see that they were not actually a statue in an alcove but a painting on a wall. It mesmerized the eyes. We were lucky enough to find so seats on the outside wall of the room and sat for a good ten minutes just trying to take it all in. That room alone was so beautiful and breathtaking that it made the 20 euro that we payed for tickets completely worth it. After we left the Sistine Chapel everything after that was just a shadow, competing even to be worthy of being considered to sit in the same museum as the Sistine Chapel. It was one of the highlights of my trip so far.
Ok long post but almost done.
Today we went to the actual Basilica. We wanted to try and see a mass but we were not sure when it would be or if there would be one, but we wanted to see the place anyhow so we were all very excited to be inside. You have to understand that I have wanted to go to St. Peter's Basilica for just about my entire life. The ultimate seat of authority for my religion in one building, is hard not to be considered moving. As we walked inside I just about burst with utter enthusiasm! However some of that was shattered when i soon realized that i had forgotten to put my memory card back into my camera after uploading photos last night. FAIL! but none the less it allowed me to focus on taking in the sights and then coming back another day to take pictures. The Basilica is also one of the most beautiful places i have ever been in. The Sistine Chapel is amazing, however it is small compared to the Basilica, and the Basilica is just a giant work of art in every aspect. There is not an inch of that building that some artist did not bleed his soul into. As we were walking around they began to herd us tourists away from a certain area, then we realized that it was because they were about to start mass. My friends and I quickly got seats and sat through mass at the Vatican! YAY LIFE! i mean it wasn't as great because it was all in Latin and we couldn't understand it but it was still very nice and we received communion.
Take that Dad! I went to mass, and at the Vatican! I also gave money during the offering! So you can no longer bother me about not going to mass until you go there and do the same! :P
Anyhow after mass we made our way outside with EVERYONE else. Everyone was just being dumb in a crowd, and it was pretty bad, but we stuck together and were working our way into the plaza when we quickly found out that the Pope normally comes out every Sunday at noon to address the crowd, guess what time it was! Pope Benny gave us a nice little blessing in about 5 different languages and we even managed to get a couple descent photos of him in his apartment. Lastly to make our day even better, we found some Swiss Guards and they let us take a picture with them. Like I said before nbd.
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