Day 94 - Vatican City

Woke up early to catch the metro. We're heading to Vatican City - the smallest sovereign state in the whole world. The Vatican Museum is notorious for its endless queues, so we went early to ensure our entry.

A simple and easy design to tell you the doors open where at which stop.

Entrance to the Vatican Museum

The queue has already started forming, even though we're there an hour before opening time. Luckily we only need to wait for 40 minutes after opening.

Inside the courtyard

Sculptures gallery, collected from around Rome.

A typical gallery in the Vatican Museum

Tapestry Gallery

Found in the map room. Interesting in a cartographic sense, as all the maps are drawn on a perspective plane. This is Venezia by the way.

Raphael's work. Several rooms in the Vatican are painted by Raphael, with amazing symbolism and techniques. The audioguide helped me to appreciate it further by telling me the techniques and axis used by Raphael.

Sistine Chapel, where everyone rushed towards, skipping the wonderful displays along the way. Here is where the cardinals gather to vote for a new pope should the previous one pass away. A sacred place, so photo taking is prohibited (as the murals were painfully restored), and silence must be obvious. This is why I took this photo of the crowd - to show how nobody respected the sacredness of the place. Many took camera with flash somemore. I pity the guards to were trying to stop people from doing it.

But I refuse to take photo of the murals, no matter how beautiful it is. What murals and frescos are there in Sistine Chapel, that everyone is rushing to see? Well, essentially Michelangelo's classics, such as

"The Last Judgement" (taken from Internet). Interesting things to note

1) Michelangelo's self portrait can be found here
2) The Pope's master-of-ceremonies' portrait was drawn as the Judge of the Underworld. Why? Apparently, he pissed Michelangelo by complaining to the Pope that nudity shouldn't be drawn in sacred places like Sistine Chapel. He complained to the Pope that Michelangelo drew his protrait as someone from the Underworld, but the Pope said that the underworld is not under his jurisdiction. Lesson for all - don't piss someone who makes masterpieces!

"Creation of Adam", with God giving the touch of life. (taken from Internet) Notice that Adam looks very much like Jesus in "The Last Judgement"? There is some symbolism to it......

Of course, the ceiling frescos narrates how God created the world, till the eviction of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The side frescos were the lives of Moses and Jesus, arranged so to draw parallels. (picture from Internet)

St Peter Basilica. After Sistine Chapel, the crowd of tour groups left. Thank goodness I need not face them anymore.

Replica of Michelangelo's La Pietà

The double staircase.

We walked out of the Vatican Museum exhausted. After all, we spent about 5 hours in there? It was more of Vatican MuseumS rather than Museum. With so many galleries of different things, it is worth every single penny of the entrance fee and audio guide. Definitely worth queuing up for.

The Swiss Guard who's being zooified. The Vatican has no army, so they hire Swiss Guards to protect the state.

The people who zooify the Swiss Guard.

St Peter Basilica, at St Peter Square.

The basilica was closed, in preparation of a service tonight. Even thought it's only 3.40pm, a queue has formed up already.

Standing on the border of Italy and Rome.

This is the first time I've seen an orange light for pedestrians.

The Tiber River.

We went back to Vatican City to catch the night view of St Peter Square. The queue has extended even further!

The queue was so long, that it start from the right side of St Peter's Basilica, all around St Peter Square to the left side of the Basilica!

St Peter's Square

Dusk at St Peter Square

I had to take this photo to demonstrate to Shiyang how I want the photo to be taken for me.

Like this one lor.

Birds flying over. We were wondering if they are attracted to the bright lights, or is it because they are not birds? After all, the holy spirit is commonly represented as doves.

We decided not to join the queue to go into the Basilica for the service. Thought that we should give the space to Catholics who would find it a lot more meaningful, then non-Christians like both of us who are out there just for experience sake.

St Peter Square at night, paranomic.

Live from St Peter's Basilica is Vatican TV! Our jaws dropped when the interiors of St Peter Basilica was shown. It was quite sad to witness that there are many disrespectful people in the service. When the Pope entered, there were so much camera flash shuttering, that I was wondering if the Pope got blinded. One of the ceremonies include passing of a candle flame to light up the candles of everyone in the Basilica, to symbolise the spread of the religion lighting up the world. The Master of Ceremonies specifically mentioned that the lights will be turned off for the symbolic meaning of this ceremony, and specified that flash photography should not be used. Yet, we still saw camera flashes going off. Sigh.