Vatican - Mesmerising, Mystic and Enigmatic!

“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstitions and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it’s turning God into a nature god” - Guy J. Consolmagno, Curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection and Astronomer at Vatican Observatory.

The Vatican is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its cultural importance. 

Everyone has a different reason to travel to the Vatican City. Some visit in the hope of getting a glimpse of the Pope, some to rekindle their vows in the belief of the Holy, some to lose themselves in the magnificent throw of art and architecture and some to understand the dynamics of the country within a country. My adventure to Vatican was purely inspired by the myth and the mystique created by Dan Brown; it was more to quench scepticism than to applaud adulation. I had put in a very good number of hours reading about Vatican, Sistine Chapel, mystery of Michelangelo, the Secret Archives, the hidden messages in the art and paintings of the Vatican Museum, but nothing prepares you for the Real Vatican City. 

Vatican - the world’s smallest country with an entire area of only 44 hectares an a small citizenship of 842 individuals is is the main episcopal see of the Roman Catholic religion, which has over 1.2 billion adherents worldwide. The Bishop of Rome, the Pope, is the ecclesiastical and sacerdotal-monarchial leader of the Vatican.Vatican  has its own flag and anthem; its own euros, postal stamps, license plates and passports; operates its own military (Swiss Guards), telephone system, media and astronomical observatory  generates its own revenue through Museum admission fees, stamps, souvenir sales and donations, which makes it the richest religious pilgrimage in the world and yet is accused of the highest the crime rate in the world. Indeed, Vatican is a Pandora’s Box. 

Reaching the Vatican City

Sunday is a great day to visit Vatican City if one wants to catch the Sunday mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at 12 p.m. and have a glimpse of the Pope who comes in one of the windows (the one with red curtain) in Apostolic Palace on the right side of the Basilica and waves hands at the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. However, on Sunday the Sistine Chapel and the Museum are closed. The Museum is open through the weekdays by an admission fee but on the last Sunday of the month the admission is free but is heavily crowded. Also, every Wednesday, the Pope holds a papal audience at St. Peter’s Basilica and hence St. Peter's Basilica is closed on Wednesday mornings for papal audiences. So, one needs to prioritise as to what to see and how to see. I personally wanted to see the Chapel and the Museum and hence went on a weekday.

My travel to Vatican was a day visit from Rome and focussed on the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s Square. I was at a high advantage for having booked the entry ticket online for the first slot from 9 a.m. as Vatican is synonymous with human traffic and saving time by starting early and avoiding admission lines is a smart move. 

As one can not use domestic or international driver's license in the Vatican City, only honoured guests or officials are allowed to do so, one has to rely on public transport to travel to Vatican. I took Bus No. 64 which connects Rome to Vatican, with a lot apprehension, considering this Bus is highly infamous for pickpockets. However, all my apprehensions died a cold death. And a 45 minutes journey landed me to the spectacular Vatican. And the first exclamation - ‘WOW’!

Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s Square are all in close vicinity but because the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel have an admission entry and a time bar from 9am to 4 pm, I first took the way two cover these two destinations. Reaching the Museum and the Chapel means a long, cattle walk so one should be prepared. 

Vatican Museum

Massive is an understatement when it comes to the Vatican Museum. The Vatican Museum house some of the world’s most beautiful and culturally significant art, sculptures, tapestry, ceramics, mummies, paintings and other works collected by the Popes through the centuries. The palace has an estimated 1,400 rooms, chapels, and galleries, most of which are a part of the Vatican Library and Museums, infact if you lay down the art pieces in the Museum it can cover four times the size of the Vatican walls.

Dress code is applicable here for both men and women, no bare shoulders or above the knee shorts or skirts. As the Museum will require minimum of a few hours, a handy bottle of water is a blessing. Though, the best option is to come along with a guided tour but if one wants to spend time at one's leisure, the self guided audio tour by the administration is also a good option.

The enormous amount of paintings, sculptures and other works located inside can easily become overwhelming for even the most well-traveled visitor. Though there is too much to see, too much to absorb and too much too comprehend in a single visit, but I have made an attempt to divide the Museum under broad heads, as follows:

1. Pinacoteca

The building of the Pinacoteca houses 18 rooms which cover art works from the Middle Ages to the 1800s. 

(a) Room No. 1

Contains the primitive collection of paintings from the 12th, 13th and 14th century. The paintings on wood are generally characterized by golden background, figures with clear outlines. The main figure is often shown in the middle of the painting, while scenes from his life are on the sides.

(b) Room No. 2

Painted on both the sides, the Room No. 2 is dedicated to the 14th century painters from Siena to Giotto. Noteworthy are the refined mosaic decorations on the throne.

(c) Room No. 3


Depicts works of the early 15th century, when a new painting style was taking hold where the golden background was slowly disappearing, figures were becoming more solid, the central perspective was the only vanishing point giving depth. The 'Madonna and Child' is in this room. 

(d) Room No. 4

Contains the works depicting the daringly foreshortened figures, serene faces and light hair. All the characters are rigorously set in perspective architecture, with typical coffered ceilings with rosettes, golden moulding and oak garlands.

(e) Room No. 5

Dedicated to 15th century paintings with the theme of ancient ruins and past architectures.

(f) Room No. 6

Contains polyptychs by 15th century artists with 14th century features.

(g) Room No. 7

Contains paintings of the Umbrian school where the calm, balanced figures are framed by architecture set in a gentle, serene landscape, including 'Madonna and the Child with Four Saints'. 

(h) Room No. 8

Shows tapestry of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and Flemish tapestries made using cartoons by Raphael.

(i) Room No. 9

Contains Leonardo’s famous 'St Jerome' and the 'Lament Over the Dead Christ' by Venetian Giovanni Bellini. 

(j) Room No. 10

Contains works by some of the greatest Venetian painters of the 16th century including the 'Madonna of St Niccolò dei Frari'. 

(k) Room No. 11

Contains works by painters of the second half of the 16th century. 

(l) Room No. 12

Dedicated to early 17th century painters who inherited a taste for realism and daring perspective. 

(m) Room No. 13, 14 and 15

Contains works which have 'genre' paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries.

(n) Room No. 16

Contains Bohemian paintings with an exceptional variety of flowers and animals. 

(o) Room No. 17 and 18

Contains clay models from the 15th to 19th century Greek icons. 

2. Raphael’s Rooms

Raphael’s rooms (Stanze di Raffaello) is four rooms in the Vatican Palace that are masterpieces of theVatican Museums. The four rooms were painted by the famous Renaissance artist, Raphael and his pupils.Each room was painted with unique themes.

(a) The First Room is the Room of Constantine. The walls and frescoes of this room depicts four episodes in the life of emperor Constantine.

(b) The Second Room is  named the Room of Heliodorus. This room was painted with political themes and themes of documenting moments in history when the Church was protected miraclously by God. 

(c) The Third Room is the Room of the Segnatura and it houses Raphael’s most famous frescoes. Raphael’s works in this room signifies the beginning of the high Renaissance. The themes in this room is focused on conveying the concepts of truth, good and beauty. 

(d) The fourth and the last room called the Room of the Fire depicts the Borgoshow political journeys of Pope Leo III and Pope Leo IV. 

3. The Egyptian Museum

The Egyptian Museum contains Greek original works, Roman copies and sculptures dating from the 1st to the 3rd A.D. The collection consists of artworks and historical vestiges from missions all over the world. The most famous group is Athena and Marsyas, a copy of a Greek original by Myron. There are some interesting models of non-Catholic places of worship, such as Beijing’s Temple of the Sky, the Altar of Confucius and the Shintoist Temple of Nara. 

4. Etruscan Museum

The Etruscan Museum contains vases, bronzes and other archaeological findings from southern Etruria, a large collection of Hellenistic Italian vases and some Roman pieces.

5. Pio-Christian Museum

The Museum contains Christian antiquities, including statues, sarcophagi, inscriptions and archaeological findings dating from the 6th century. Noteworthy is the statue of the Good Shepherd: it represents a beardless young man wearing a sleeveless tunic and a bag. 

6. Gregorian Profane Museum

The Museum contains potpourri of pagan art, mostly Greek, including antiquities from the Roman and Greek eras, some great bits of Greek sculpture along with some of the best preserved ancient Greek and Roman mosaics in Rome.

7. Gallery of Tapestries

On the left wall of the Gallery, the Tapestries life of Christ and the ones on the right tell the life of Urban VIII, Pope from the Barberini family. These tapestries were woven in and it took 9 years to finish just one tapestry. They are made out of the most precious materials like gold thread, silk, silver thread and wool. They were not only made to decorate walls but also to keep out the heat or the cold in summer or winter. 

8. Pius-Clementine Museum

The Museum houses the most important Greek and Roman masterpieces in the Vatican. Passing through a square vestibule and a small room with a magnificent marble cup, enters the Cabinet of Apoxyomenos which shows an atlete scrapping off his sweat with a strigil. After the Cabinet, one reaches the Octagonal Courtyard which has statues of the Belvedere Apollo, God of Beauty, the celebrated Laocoon group, Athanadoros and Polydoros. 

Next to the courtyard are the following:

• Room of the Animals
• Gallery of Statues
• Room of Busts, mostly containing portraits of Roman emperors
• Cabinet of Masks
• Room of Muses
• Round Room
• Greek-cross Room

9. Missionary Ethnological Museum

The Museum is a collection of objects from cultures around the world collected by missionaries, including objects depicting cultures of Buddhism, Hinduism Islam, African, Native American, and other cultures.

10. The Immaculate Conception and Sobieski Rooms

The Sobieski Room derives its name from the large painting in the Room which represents Polish King John III Sobieski’s victory over the Turks in Vienna in 1683. All the other paintings in the room date from the 19th century.

The Room of the Immaculate contains a big showcase, a gift from the French company Christofle, full of books given to Pius IX by kings, bishops, cities and dioceses, when the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated.

11. Borgia Apartment

This was a private wing built for Alexander VI. Most of the rooms are now used for the Collection of Modern Religious Art. This Collection hosts about 600 accumulated works of painting, sculpture and graphic, through donations of contemporary Italian and foreign artists. 

12. Gallery of the Candelabra

Originally an open loggia, the loggia was walled up at the end of the 18th century. The gallery contains Roman copies of Hellenistic originals and some great 2nd century candelabra, from Otricoli.

13. The Chariot Room

This Room contains a large marble Roman chariot drawn by two horses.

14. Apartment of Pius V

This Apartment consists of a gallery, two small rooms and a chapel. It was built for Pope Pius V. The first of the two small rooms contains a rich Mediaeval and Renaissance collection of ceramics found in the Vatican Palaces and in other Vatican properties in Rome; the other room has a suggestive collection of minute mosaics.

15. Gallery of Maps

It takes its name from the 40 maps frescoed on the walls, which represent the Italian regions and the papal properties at the time of Pope Gregory. The Ceiling of the Gallery is magnificent display of art which intertwines Christian beliefs with geography of Italy. 

16. Chiaramonti Museum - Braccio Nuovo Gallery

Chiaramonti Museum houses a collection of Roman busts and statues and Braccio Nuovo Gallery contains Roman statues and Roman copies of Greek original statues.

17. Historical Museum - Carriage Pavilion

This Museum contains saddles, carriages, automobiles and sedan chairs used by various Popes.

18. The Spiral Staircase

Also called the Momo Staircase or the Snail Staircase, it is made up of two wrought iron stairways, one going up and the other going down, that curve in a double helix. Ironically it was created in a time before the double helix became a symbol for science, DNA and subsequently, all human life. 

19. Vatican Courtyards

The Vatican Courtyards are divided by the Fontana della Pigna, the library courtyard, and the Cortile del Belvedere. The Cortile della Pigna owes its name to a 4-meter tall pine cone made of bronze that stands in this courtyard. The Vatican Library is surrounded by the Cortile della Biblioteca and the Cortile del Belverde. At every corner of this octagonal-shaped courtyard, you will find an art master piece. 

Indeed, Vatican Museum is humongous and the more you see, the farther you want to deepen your understanding. However, to save time, one needs to research and read on the Museums pre-hand  and not venture in them like a virgin. 

Moving from the Museum, one makes his way to the most talked about 'The Sistine Chapel'.

The Sistine Chapel 

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in the sixteenth century, a time when both religion and science was believed to hold the absolute truth. Michelangelo completed his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in a period of four years, starting his painting from east to west and beginning from the entrance of the Chapel and finishing above the altar. 

There is an insult theory to say that Michelangelo Buonarroti, singular artistic genius, sculptor and anatomist and had hidden secret message while painting the Sistine Chapel. 

Despite the hype around The Sistine Chapel, it will be hushed and crowded. No photography is allowed in the Chapel and the security guards present will enforce this rule under every pretext.  

Some interesting facts and hypothesis around the Chapel are herein below:

(a)  Michelangelo didn’t paint on his back. It’s a common myth that Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back, but Michelangelo and his assistants actually worked while standing on a scaffold that Michelangelo had built himself.

(b) Michelangelo regarded himself as a sculptor and didn’t enjoy painting. He suffered from backache while painting the Sistine Chapel, and even wrote a poem lamenting his suffering.

(c) There may be a hidden brain in The Creation of Adam. The shape created by the angels and robes surrounding God bears an uncanny resemblance to the human brain, complete with stem, frontal lobe and artery. Given Michelangelo’s anatomical studies, it’s unlikely to be coincidental. 

(d) Michelangelo designed God as a wise old man with long white hair and a beard. Before Michelangelo, God was usually depicted as a hand coming down from the clouds, and this was the first time God had been depicted in such a dynamic way.

(e) The nudity in the Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine chapel was considered controversial and risqué. After Michelangelo’s death, the painter Daniele da Volterra was commissioned to cover up the genitals with fig leaves and loincloths.

(f) The Bible suggests that Eve’s forbidden fruit is an apple. In the ceiling panel depicting the Temptation, Michelangelo’s tree is a fig. The serpent in this scene, Satan, is depicted not as a male figure, but with a woman’s head. Some theorists are of the belief that Michelangelo payed a homage to his Jewish roots through this 'disformity'. Fig is a holy tree in Jewish scriptures. 

(g) God is depicted six times in the ceiling frescoes. Christ does not feature as an adult but as a child, synonymous with the Old Testament.

(h) Most of the decorative male nudes on Michelangelo’s ceiling, are shown with acorns. Julius II’s family name was Rovere, which means 'oak' in Italian. The acorns are a less than subtle way of Michelangelo acknowledging his patron.

(i)  The Sistine Chapel is most famous for Michelangelo’s frescoes, but long before Michelangelo, Sisto commissioned painters such as Botticelli to fresco the two long walls of the chapel: one side told the story of Moses, the other the story of Christ. Even without Michelangelo’s work, these earlier paintings still represent one of Europe’s greatest fresco cycles.

St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter’s Basilica sits atop a city of the dead. Emperor Nero in A.D. 64 falsely accused the Christians of starting a great fire which levelled much of Rome and subsequently executed them by burning them at the stake, tearing them apart with wild beasts and crucifying them.  Among those crucified was St. Peter, disciple of Jesus Christ and leader of the Apostles and the first bishop of Rome. By the 4th century Emperor Constantine began construction of the original basilica atop the ancient burial ground with what was believed to be the tomb of St. Peter at its center. The present basilica sits over a maze of catacombs and St. Peter’s suspected grave.

Keeping the cultural importance of St. Peter's Basilica aside, the pure architectural beauty of the church is awe-inspiring.

Admission to the Basilica is free. 

Also  the Pieta Statue, located just to the right of the entrance of St. Peter’s is one of the only statues to have been signed by its creator, a young Michelangelo who, upon hearing two clergymen discuss their disbelief that such a young artist could make such a masterpiece, snuck into the Vatican to carve his name. It is a marble sculpture that depicts Jesus Christ lying in the lap of the Virgin Mary after the crucifixion.

Beneath the main basilica, and accessible by a door in the Pier of St Andrew, are the Vatican Grottoes, where you can see several papal tombs and columns from the original 4th-century Basilica.

You can't miss a  360 degree top view of the Vatican City, which will take you to the Dome and the Copula. The catch is nothing great comes easy. One has to climb to the Dome which means 551 steps or take an elevator (7 euros) and climb 330 steps.

There is no two way to the Dome so once one is on the journey to the dome, one can not back out.

St. Peter's Square

St. Peter's Square is a large common area welcoming the tourists to Vatican. The Vatican’s great focal space, this keyhole-shaped piazza is enclosed by two vast colonnades. Common important sights at the Square is the Obelisk, the Swiss Guards and the Fountains. 

To crown the center of the amphitheate in St. Peter's Square, Roman Emperor Caligula had his forces transport from Egypt a pylon which was erected as 'The Obelisk' , made of a single piece of red granite weighing more than 350 tons, in St. Peter’s Square. The Obelisk also doubles as a giant sundial.

The Pontifical Swiss Guards, recognised by their armor and colorful Renaissance-era uniforms, has been protecting the Pontiff, the Apostolic Palace, and acts as the de facto armed forces of Vatican City, since 1506. The 130 members of the Swiss Guard are required to be Catholic, unmarried Swiss citizens who have completed Swiss military service. They need to be at least 5ft 8in tall and between the ages of 19 and 30.

The two fountains, the first designed by Carlo Moderno and the second a replica by Carlo Fontana keep up with the symmetry of the Square. 

What to Buy from Vatican ?

Shopping in the Vatican City is best done after your visits to all the sight-seeing places. More or less all of the stores sell the same things. You can find special offers for one article and maybe find another article in different colors or versions but more or less; what you see in one store you’ll likely find it in the next store too. Articles like postcards, calendars, statues, paintings, rosary, Vatican postage stamps, coins and books about the Popes and the Vatican history can make up a part of the Vatican Souvenirs. When buying from vendors make sure to ask for cheaper prices and make deals. Don’t be afraid to ask for a lower price. Making bargains is normal.  

One good thing is you can get any religious gifts/items blessed by the Pope and delivered to your hotel at no additional cost, all you have to do is fill out a form.

What to Eat in Vatican ?

Vatican might be a little overpriced than Rome but if eaten at the right place, there will be no disappointments. By law, restaurant in Vatican are allowed to enforce table pricing which is often considerably more than bar pricing. It is up to the customer to look for this pricing, whether posted inside, or on a physical menu, and make an informed decision before ordering.

Choose a restaurant that is mid way between St. Peter's Square and the Vatican Museum for value for money. I gorged at the following and wasn't dismayed.

Caffetteria Ruberto                                           

One of the most local spots there is in this neighbourhood, Ruberto serves hot croissants and creamy cappuccinos and one is heaven. 

Hostaria Dei Bastioni

The restaurant is located close to the Vatican and with an excellent balance between price and food quality. Very homely ambience with local flavoured food. Gorged on Ravioli in walnut sauce, Fresh Pasta in local herbs and a good gals of wine. 

Gelato

You can't miss Gelato, especially when its everywhere, literally everywhere. By the time you finish having one, you would have arrived at another Gelato shop.

So that's the end of a day's journey to Vatican. Remember, the scepticism I held before coming here, well, all that is at rest. Vatican is magnificent. You could belong to any religion, belief or practice, Vatican will allure you. 

______________________________________________________