Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Italy tour - Vatican

Vatican is the smallest country in the world and probably the place every Christian wants to visit at least once in his/her life time. It is also very rich, population growth of almost zero % (it is +ve due to swiss guards who can have kids). They have their own currency, their own shopping malls (with no taxes), their own army, and almost everything you would like to have in any affluent country. By the way Vatican is the smallest country in the world.
Allocating a day should be more than sufficient in Vatican, unless you want to waste time in the lines and / or want to explore the city in full details. It is a great city, take time to absorb the beauty and grandeur. Don't haste here. If you can afford, take a guide with you and get every thing explained. It has very interesting history.
Here are the places we visited and my opinions on those places.

Vatican Museum

 Probably the largest museum in the world (so they claim), it has more than 1500 rooms. These are private collections of popes (about 200 of them ).  I wonder how rich the Popes must have to even get such a large private collection. It is full of frescos, wall hangings, paintings, sculptures, beautiful corridors. It would take almost 11 days to go through the museum even if you spend only 10 mins per room :). You have guides who walk you though the highlights of the museum. We just took one of those tours. They are expensive but save you loads of time since you can get to skip the usually very long line in front of museum. The guide was very engaging and explained various paintings, sculptures, their history and some not so great things that you would like to share with kids :). Overall it was damn impressive.

One of the ceilings had a great painting which I thought was an etched sculpture on the top. here is the picture of the same.  Apparently this a common technique in painting (called French style or something)

St. Peter's Basilica
No doubt the grandest of all the churches you would ever see, this is the largest church in the world. It is so damn huge that it takes a while to walk from one side to another. It has the famous Dove window by Bernini, the works of Michelangelo (piata and some paintings) and beautiful St. Peter's Center altar. If you look down you can see underground rooms (think Angels and Demons). Oh yeah you can also see where the Camerlengo sets himself on fire in Angels and Demons :) It is beautiful to the extent you would loose interest in all other chapels and churches :) 
Sistine Chapel
Home of the famous Michelangelo's fresco, it is considered, probably, the most sacred chapel in the world. It is pretty small when compared to other churches and chapels you would find around, but the fresco and the meaning that he wanted to convey is awesome. It conveys genesis, 9 part fresco and some other total christianity related stuff that I didnt understand much. This is where the cardinals select next Pope. By the way, you cannot take any pictures since Kodak owns the copyrights to the fresco :)
St. Peter's square
Its so huge that you can accommodate about 200,000 people at once. Its probably one of the best sights you can ever get. It is in almost a circle, with an opening at one end to let people come in and at the other end is the entrance to St. Peter's Basilica. All around you would see tall cylindrical pillars and a beautiful corridor. In the middle is where you find another fountain, beautiful as everything around it. (this is where a dead guy is found in Angels and Demons).

1 comment:

Rocky said...

I believe I have read enough about these monuments and architectures more in "Angels and Daemons" book :)