I feel the need to start this post with a warning. It’s a long one (the post, not the warning) and it will otherwise take me a few paragraphs to get to the subject. So I’ll start by saying it’s largely about the Vatican Museums and, as part of that, the Sistine Chapel. But I’ll also include a trip summary at the end. You might want to stick around for that. Or you might not. It’s hard to tell. I’ll get into it and you can let me know.
This morning, I took a train from Bari to Rome, a journey that spanned a little over four hours, but it didn’t require any connections. Now, I’m back where I started this southern Italy trip more than three weeks ago.
Where has the time gone? I’m hoping for a theoretical physics answer to that. Something about the whole space-time continuum and the quantum explanation of time, if any of that is even a valid way to talk about time. If you can help me there, please explain it as if you were talking to someone with just an elementary school education. I have a university education, but when it comes to the physics of time, or, to be honest, the physics of anything, I’ll probably struggle, and likely fail, to understand you no matter how elementary your explanation. But it might benefit you to get it out to someone who is reasonably capable of pretending he cares. (Actually, if you could explain it to me in a way I could understand it would, in fact, interest me. Seriously.)
The next question is, where did the time you spent reading the preceding inane, run-on paragraph go?
The point is, I’m back in Rome and will catch a plane home tomorrow. Or, if I don’t hurry up and finish this it will soon be today. Andiamo.
But that’s tomorrow (or maybe today). I arrived in Roma Termini, Rome’s central station, at about one in the afternoon. My hotel is about a twelve minute walk away. That left me with the better part of the afternoon to do something in Rome. (I’m hoping to skip the worse part of the afternoon.) What I did with that time was to have lunch and then visit the Vatican Museums.
By the way, why is the “sort of” in the title of this post after “Rome,”? Here’s why. I think most people are at least vaguely aware of this, but for the benefit of those who aren’t, Vatican City isn’t part of Rome. Or Italy, for that matter.
It’s right smack dab in the middle of Rome. (Well, not dead centre, but Rome and its suburbs fully surround it.) For all tourists’ intents and purposes. it is part of Rome, but politically it’s not.
It’s Vatican City or, officially, Vatican City State. It’s its own sovereign country, recognized as a member of the United Nations on its own. God knows why. And He hasn’t told me.
Why the Vatican Museums?
Why, you might ask, did I choose the Vatican Museums. Why would you ask a such silly question as that? It’s the Vatican Museums. That’s why.
I figured, because I didn’t do it during any of the days I spent in Rome at the start of this trip, I should take in one of the major, super, heavy hitters of Rome tourism. That means either going inside the Colosseum or the Sistine Chapel.
I’ve been into both on previous trips to Rome predating the start of this travel journal. Prehistory, if you will. I looked at the websites for both to research the options for buying timed tickets in advance to minimize (but, in my experience, not eliminate) waiting in lines with the rest of the plodding horde.
The Colosseum website told me I could buy a timed ticket only if I bought a ticket that included entry into the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. I was morally opposed to that. I visited those at the start of this trip. After spending the money and the interminable line time at the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, I’ll be damned if I was going to pay for a ticket that included those sights and then throw away that part of the ticket just so I could get into the Colosseum. WASTE! Waste, I tell ya. I’ll have none of that!
As far as I could tell from the website, the only way to get a ticket to go into only the Colosseum is to go there and stand in line to buy a physical ticket. I didn’t check, but I doubt they have a seniors rate because seniors aren’t likely to live long enough to make it to the front of the line. There are other places I want to visit in my life. I don’t want to die waiting to buy a ticket to go into the Colosseum.
The Vatican Museums website, on the other hand, sold me a timed ticket just for its institution. While on the train to Rome, I bought one for 3:30 in the afternoon.
(St. Peter’s Basilica is separate. To get in you have to join a long line and go through security. I think it’s free, but, as beautiful as it is (I’ve been before), how many cathedrals, basilicas, and other churches can one atheist Jew visit in a single trip to Italy before he says, “basta!” (“Enough!”)?
For the answer to that question, reread all of the previous posts from this trip, count up the number of cathedrals, basilicas, and other churches I visited. There’s your answer.
I mentioned the heavy hitter of the Sistine Chapel, but then bought a ticket to the Vatican Museums. Yes, yes I did. The Sistine Chapel is included in the Vatican Museums.
I’d been to the Sistine Chapel on two prehistory trips to Rome. I felt the need to go again today because a true Travel Snob is someone who can say, “The Sistine Chapel? Phht. I’ve been there many times.”
I’m not yet a Full Travel Snob.. I currently have only an Assistant Travel Snob position. But I’m working on advancing.
I don’t think twice is enough to qualify as “many times.” But three, which will be my count after today, is getting close. I’m hoping I can parlay that into an Associate Travel Snob position.
Yeah, I know that a chapel kind of counts in the cathedral, basilica or church category, but it’s the Sistine Chapel, dammit!
Lunch
By the time I got to my hotel and deposited my bags (my room wasn’t ready) it was getting close to 1:30 in the afternoon. Google Maps told me that it would take almost 55 minutes to walk to the Vatican Museums or 25 minutes to take the subway. That subway route included some walking to and from Metro stations.
Then I’d have to find the entrance for pre-bought tickets. So, walking wouldn’t leave me enough time for a respectable lunch. Despite enjoying walking, I decided on the subway. Priorities, dear reader. Priorities.
I found a cucina near my Metro embarkation station and had lunch there. It consisted of trofie pasta with pesto, tomatoes, and bacon, a glass of wine, and an espresso. Due to time constraints, I didn’t linger as much as had become my habit on this trip, but I quite enjoyed the food.
Vatican Museums Entry
Once again my neuroses lessened the enjoinment of my life. I needn’t have rushed lunch. I had no problem figuring out the Metro. You just tap a credit card on the turnstile and in you go. And Google Maps told me which line end-point to look for to get the train in the right direction.
Google Maps also led me directly to the Vatican Museums entrance from the Metro. I landed there almost 45 minutes before my appointed time. I tried, but they wouldn’t let me in early. They told me I had to go away (literally, they said I had to go away) and come back after the 3:00 pm ticket-holders went in.
I wandered the streets in the vicinity for a bit.
As I mentioned, I’d been before but I’d forgotten how supremely ugly Vatican City looks from the outside on that side of it.
It’s one long, multi-storey, bleak brick wall extending for the equivalent of a few blocks. The only break in the ungodly cheerlessness is the grandish entrance to the Vatican Museums. Although, I call it the entry because I imagine that’s what it originally was. It’s now the exit and they use a set of nearby mundane doors as the entrance.
Couldn’t they do anything to brighten it up? Maybe a large video wall displaying animated dancing popes and Vatican logos. And maybe a large, 3D “VATICAN CITY STATE” sign in rainbow colours. Oh, right. Religion. Maybe not rainbow colours. Never mind.
I came back to the entrance at about five past three to find a line of people with 3:30 tickets waiting to go in. They started processing the line almost right away and I was inside by 3:15.
When I bought my ticket online I also payed to rent an audioguide to make sure that I would have a full quota of information to promptly forget. I think I forget things even faster now that I’m older. With age comes efficiency.
Inside the Vatican Museums
Author’s note: I forgot to take notes about what I took pictures of in the Vatican Museums. So most of the captions will be a variation on “a piece at the Vatican Museums.” Sorry about that. If I guessed, I’m pretty sure I’d correctly identify the Egyptian pieces as Egyptian pieces, but not any better definition than that. And I’m not sure I’d remember or be able to identify which are Greek and which are Roman pieces, so I won’t try.
The Vatican Museums is huge. (I’ve seen it called both “Vatican Museum” and “Vatican Museums.” It’s most often Museums, not Museum. And that’s what is on its website. So that’s what I’ll go with. However, as far as I could tell, it’s one large museum with a number of sections. So, I’m going to assume that it’s just a name for a single entity despite the “s” on the end. That’s why I used “is.” rather than “are,” in the first sentence of this paragraph.
This raises the question, how anal retentive do you have to be that you are obsessively compelled to provide the above explanation so people won’t think it was another of your accidental typos? This anal retentive. That’s how much.
Like I said before I got sidelined by my anal retentiveness, the museum is huge. It starts with a large Egyptian section that contains statues, esophagi that used to contain mummies, etched stones, and more that I’ve forgotten. I didn’t see anything in there dating from the Common Era and I saw at least one piece from more than two millennia before the common era.
The next large sections, both indoors and out, held Greek and Roman statuary. Those were more modern, dating generally from 500 years before the Common Era to about 500 years after the start of the Common Era.
This caused me to wonder, what the heck are these pieces doing in a museum in the Vatican, the global head office of Roman Catholicism? Seriously. These are precious, ancient pieces. The vast majority of them, and I think all of them in the Egyptian galleries, date from before the Common Era.
You know, the Common Era, the boundary of which Christians defined. There was no Christianity before that because Christ wasn’t born before that, if he was born at all. So why are these precious relics at the epitome of Catholic Christianity? There are any number of secular museums that would kill to get those pieces were it not for the Commandment against not killing.
Very clever of God to come up with that commandment to prevent all senseless murder and mayhem. How has that worked out for us so far?
Rant over.
I forget which section it was in, but there are also a couple of windows with great views of Rome out of one and a Vatican courtyard out the other.
By the time i got through the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman galleries, I was starting to feel my museum mind-melt. So I forget the order of the remaining galleries. But there was a room with a lot of very large tapestries hanging on the wall. Finally, these got into Christian themes.
There was also a long hall with a series large maps, almost floor to ceiling, painted all along both opposing walls of the hall.
That’s what’s great about modern times. Now I can pull out my phone, call up one of my map apps, find my current location, plot a route to where I want to go, and have the map show me my location along the route so I can make a correction if I veered off the path.
If I lived back then, how many people would I have had to hire to be able to carry those large sections of the wall around? And even then, I still would have struggled to find my location as the map wouldn’t automatically display it for me. I don’t think I could have traveled back then. I’d always be lost. And a lot of my map carriers would likely die along the way from the strain.
Today is better.
Somewhere beyond the map hall—at least I think it was beyond, not before—there’s a series of rooms the walls and ceilings of which are fully decorated with frescoes painted by Raphael. How cool is that? My walls are all just off-white and in a desperate need of repainting.
Too bad Raphael has long since retired eternally. Then again, I couldn’t afford him. So, it doesn’t really matter, does it?
There are also a number of other galleries with paintings and sculptures from various eras, including right up to the 21st century.
I’ve probably forgotten a few other galleries. I said earlier the Vatican Museums is huge. Massive might be an even better word.
There is a strictly prescribed route through the Vatican Museums. After you’ve gone through most of its major galleries, which in itself can take a long time, there are some signs with arrows and the message, “Yeah; yeah. We know; we know. You came here only to see the Sistine Chapel. We won’t torture you anymore. If you follow this arrow you can bypass some of the lesser galleries in the Vatican Museum. You’ll hurt our feelings if you do, but off you go if you must, plebs.”
The signs didn’t say that in so many words, but I think that’s what the museum was thinking.
I didn’t take the shortcuts for a couple of reasons. For one, I paid my damned money. I’ll torture myself for as long as I want, dammit!
For another …
Crowds at the Vatican Museums
The crowds at the Vatican Museums were oppressive today. I’ve never liked crowds, but these were over the top.
Because the museum prescribes and enforces a precise route, there was a defined flow of those crowds rather than a scattering. They slowly edged inexorably through the Vatican Museums to the ultimate goal, the Sistine Chapel, like a mud-laden river, so silted as to have such a high viscosity that the river may still move inexorably to the sea, lake, or wherever the heck it’s going, but it barely oozes rather than flows there.
Those sections of the museum that weren’t on the shortcut path weren’t crowded. I needed the relief.
Sistine Chapel
But the human oozing river does eventually reach the Sistine Chapel. And, I don’t think there is any way for the paying public to get to the chapel but to go through the museum. I’m sure Vatican insiders can bypass the museum somehow, but us plebs can’t as far as I could tell.
Upon reaching the Sistine Chapel I stopped complaining about the crowds in the Vatican Museums. The crowds in the chapel were even more unbelievable. I was there and I didn’t believe it.
As I said earlier, I’d been to the Sistine Chapel twice before in my life. There are seats along two facing walls of the chapel. I remember on at least one, and I think both of my previous visits, being able to easily get one of those seats and gaze at the ceiling and walls of the chapel for a while from that perch. I also seem to remember being able to stand in the centre of the chapel and, while there were definitely a lot of people there, it wasn’t to the point where I thought hundreds would die in the subsequent stampede if anyone yelled, “Fire!”
Not this time. All of the chairs were occupied and the people sitting on them looked like they were thinking, “We waited so long and fought so hard for these seats, now that we’ve got them, we’re never leaving. Ever.”
The attendants in the Sistine Chapel maintained a flow along an artificial path a bit in from one wall, and around a bend to the exit. If anyone paused in this unmarked people flow route, the attendants told them, repeatedly to “Keep moving; keep moving. If you want to stand move to the centre of the room.” Interestingly, they said it only in English.
I moved to the centre of the room. I think the crowds might have bruised a rib or two of mine just milling about.
I took in Michelangelo’s paintings as best I could for a few minutes and then moved on.
If you’ve never been to the Sistine Chapel there’s something you might not realize. You do, no doubt know that it was painted by Michelangelo. Everyone knows that. But, you know that painting from the ceiling that’s reproduced ad infinitum?
Oh, come on. You know. That painting of an old God up in the sky reaching out His finger to touch the finger of a naked dude on the ground. Although, many of the reproductions show only the two fingers touching, not most of the naked dude. Yeah, that painting. I knew you knew.
Here’s the thing you might not know, and I shamefully admit I didn’t know before I visited. That’s not the only image Michelangelo put up on the ceiling. It’s just a very small part of it. There are all kinds of different similar-sized scenes filling the ceiling.
And on the walls, almost immediately below the ceiling, there are a series of individual religious figures. And below that is another series of religious scenes.
But if you go only by the reproductions you’ve likely seen you’d probably think that picture of God reaching out to the finger of the naked dude dominates, by far, in terms of size. It doesn’t. Not even close.
Before I went the first time, I expected it fill most of the ceiling rather than a quite small section of it. I remember not even spotting it at first. It took me at least a few seconds.
Now you know. Of course, the only person I can thoroughly count on to read this journal not terribly long after I publish each entry already knew. She’s an art historian specializing in the Italian Renaissance. One of my two previous visits to the Sistine chapel was with her and a couple of other people. Good times.
Oh, wait. Here’s another thing you might not know about the Sistine Chapel if you’ve never been. They strictly forbid photos in the chapel. You’re free to take them in the Vatican Museums, but not the chapel. There are frequent signs forbidding it. And, while i’ve never tried it myself, in my previous visits I’ve seen people try to take a picture, only to have an attendant rush up to them and insist that they delete it. Today, if surreptitious picture-takers stood in the middle of the crowd and pointed their cameras up at the ceiling they might have gotten away with it because the crowd would have blocked the attendants’ views of them.
But the point is, that’s why there aren’t any pictures in this section.
Exiting the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums
After exiting the chapel, the Vatican Museum has a few more small, minor galleries. I was so museumed out by then that I don’t remember what they contain. I think it is either old tchotchkes or Mickey Mouse memorabilia. Probably the former. Or something else.
Then I had to walk through a long series of hallways leading to the exit. Those hallways contained not one, not two, but three gift shops at different points along the way.
I finally got to an area that looked like it might be an exit. But not quite. Instead I was greeted by the topmost sign in the picture of two signs I posted here.
There is a fourth gift shop.
And just before leaving that gift shop area and reaching the long spiral ramp that leads to the exit I was confronted by the sign on the bottom in the picture.
They really, really, really don’t want anyone to miss the super-exciting opportunity to buy trinkets and trash from them. But I did indeed forgo that opportunity.
After finally getting to the exit, I walked around two sides of that bleak Vatican City wall so I could go into St. Peter’s Square, take a picture of the square and basilica to post here (see below).
Back to my hotel
I walked the whole way back to the hotel rather taking the Metro. I wanted to move my legs before my nine-and-a-half-hour flight tomorrow. Plus, it was rush hour and I really didn’t want to experience any more crowds in enclosed places.
The route Apple Maps gave me took me through some uncrowded, narrow, cobblestone streets just sitting there looking beguiling, as uncrowded, narrow, cobblestone streets often do in Rome. I’ll post a small collage here.
Unfortunately the route took me by a major tourist attraction, Trevi Fountain, where the heavy crowds bottlenecked.
I thought about stopping and taking yet another photo of it, but I decided against it for a couple of reasons. For one, I published a picture of it in my first post from this trip.
For another, I’ve had well more than my fill today of pushing large numbers of small children and adults even older and frailer than I am to the ground so I can get a picture of whatever it was they were crowding out. I would have done the same to large children and younger, fitter adults, but I feared they’d be more likely to fight back, and win.
Obviously, I’m joking. No small children or older adults were harmed in the making of this journal entry. I would never use force to get my way, particularly not for something as trivial as taking a picture. I’d think about it, sure. Who wouldn’t? But I’d never do it.
And so ended my day’s activities. It’s now time to tie a bow on this trip.
Trip Summary
Let’s start this summary off by saying that I really loved this trip to southern Italy.
It’s not hard to pick a favourite. That’d be Matera. I loved it. The scenic beauty of the town and gorge and the character of the sassi are not to be missed.
But there are a lot of close seconds. There are so many interesting things to do in Rome and Naples, that it’s easy to keep happily busy and interested in both of those cities.
Sorrento is beautiful, by the sea, near the Amalfi coast, and only a short ferry ride to the island is Capri. And Capri is amazing. It’s hard to beat its scenic beauty and charm.
Lecce has a lot of interesting history and old world charm in its old town. It’s another one that shouldn’t be missed. And, if you can do a side trip to the nearby portions of the Adriatic coast, that’s spectacular too.
Bari has a lovely old town and a nice coast, but, to be honest, if it were just Bari, I could have skipped it or spent less time there. But then I wouldn’t have been able to take the side trips I took from there. And I’m throughly glad I didn’t miss those. (If you want to check out those side trips, look at the Bari category of this journal. It includes links to posts about them.)
And that brings me back to Rome and then home.
Would I have spent more time in one place and less in another? There are a lot of places I thought I might have liked more time in. I would have liked to overnight for one or two nights on the Island of Capri so I could have done a little more hiking on the island and gotten over to the other town there, Anacapri.
And there are couple of other lesser-know islands that are easy side trips from Naples that I’ve never been to, so I would have had no problem filling up another day or two in Naples.
I could have done with a day less in Sorrento. But if I came in the high season when tours and ferries are more plentiful or if I rented a car, there are other places I would have liked to have seen on the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento is a good base to visit them from. Or I could have stayed a night or two in one of the Amalfi coast towns if I shortened Sorrento by a day.
And, of course, there are lots of other interesting places in Southern Italy that I never got to.
Here’s the thing, though. When I take a longish trip, I usually reach a point, rarely much beyond the three week mark, when, no matter how much I enjoyed, or even loved, the trip, I’m ready to go home and resume my regularly scheduled, super-boring routines. This trip has been three and a half weeks and I’ve reached that point. I’m ready to go home tomorrow.
If I live and stay sufficiently healthy for long enough, I’d love to come back. But there are also other places in the world that I’m itching to see for the first time or return to. So, who knows? As I seem to recall saying in a recent post, time and money are finite. So, we’ll see, dear.
If history is any guide, it won’t take many days of being back at my boring routines until I’ll be eager to go away again. So that leaves just one question. Where to next? I don’t know. There are some ideas swirling in my head. But I’ll wait the at least a few days until I’m tired again of my life at home before I solidify those ideas.
See you next trip.
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