Hi friends, welcome back to my Italy series! If you take away one thing from my Italy posts, I hope it’s this tour of the Vatican we did, it was worth EVERY penny! The Vatican Museum is a must visit for the priceless art and a look at the jaw dropping Sistine Chapel. It’s on everyone’s list which translates to MASSIVE CROWDS no matter what time you go. I was perusing the Vatican’s website because I usually prefer to book through the actual museums/sites and not a third party, and I saw the “Prime Experience – Vatican Museums” tickets. They included breakfast and a tour that began one hour before the museum opened for 68 euros a person. I found one blog about this experience and it sounded pretty promising, so I booked two tickets for a tour starting at 7:30am. I booked these three months in advance and would recommend booking early because they sell out pretty fast. You should also book these directly through the Vatican, it seems like third party companies don’t actually get in any earlier than the general public.
We took a cab and by the time we got to the museum a little after 7am, there was already a decent sized line outside the museum. We walked right in and through security in a few short minutes. There were a few groups of these tours, but they staggered the times by a few minutes so that there were only about 25 people in an area at one time. Our tour started upstairs through the Candelabra, Tapestries, Maps, Raphael Rooms, and ending in the Sistine Chapel. We got to cut through areas on our tour that aren’t accessible to the general admission, so this gave us some buffer time too.
The Vatican Museum was originally the pope’s palaces and was turned into a museum in 1506 by Pope Julius II, and opened to the public in 1771. No pictures could do this incredible museum justice, but I tried my best. Some highlights on our tour:
Candelabra Room
Diana the Huntress was the Roman goddess of hunting.
Artemis of Ephesus was a goddess of fertility.
Bacchus has his original glass eyes, but originally didn’t have a fig leaf. The Vatican added them from 1550-1800 because they thought the statues were obscene. The leaves are made of plaster and can be removed at any time.
The coat of arms of Pope Leo XIII made with lapis lazuli. Back then lapis lazuli could only be found in Afghanistan, so it was as expensive as gold.
This is how the hall was the second time we walked through around 11, we could hardly move!
The Tapestries Room shows the life of Christ from a baby in the manger to the Resurrection. In the Resurrection, Jesus’s eyes seem to follow you. Raphael and his students created the paintings for these to be weaved into tapestries. It’s pretty incredible how they could weave such detail onto such a large tapestry.
The Maps room was stunning, especially without the crowds blocking all the maps. These served as the pope’s personal maps from roughly the late 1500s until the 1800s.
The room later in the day…
The Renaissance Wing was where the pope’s living quarters were and are decorated by some of the most famous painters of the Renaissance times. Liberation of Vienna by Jan Matejko depicts Vienna defeating the Ottoman armies and King Jan Sobieski is on the horse in the center.
The next room has a bookcase with the doctrine of Immaculate Conception that says Mary was born without sin.
The next few rooms were all done by Raphael. In the Constantine Room, Raphael painted Constantine having the vision of the cross before battle. This was finished after Raphael’s death by his students.
Constantine’s army with the cross on their shields in battle.
Constantine getting crowned king and being baptized.
On the ceiling a Roman statue is shown broken with the cross prevailing.
The Liberation of St. Peter by Raphael shows an angel rescuing Peter from a jail in Jerusalem. The picture is broken up into three scenes: the guards getting reprimanded, the angel undoing the chains, and the angel guiding Peter out of the jail. This painting highlights Raphael’s mastery of light and darkness, and realism.
The School of Athens depicts many famous scientists including Plato (shown as Leonardo da Vinci) pointing up while Aristotle gestures down. Socrates is on left in green, Euclid (shown as Donato Bramante the architect of St. Peters) is bent over the slate doing equations, Raphael included himself in the black beret and the scene is depicted in an early St. Peters. Raphael was working on this at the same time Michelangelo was painting the Sistine chapel down the hall. He was so impressed that he added Michelangelo to his painting, the figure leaning on a block of marble.
Across from The School of Athens, La Disputa depicts Christ overseeing a discussion of the Eucharist.
After the Raphael Rooms we headed straight into the Sistine Chapel where pictures are forbidden. We were in the Sistine Chapel with only about 75 other people because of our tour and it was just incredible. Usually the room is jam packed, but we got to sit and admire all of Michelangelo’s work in such a peaceful atmosphere. Originally, Michelangelo declined to paint the Sistine Chapel because he considered himself a sculptor, but the Pope made it so he couldn’t say no. If you haven’t seen the Sistine Chapel yet, I hope you make it there one day. It’s truly one of those sights you just have to see in person. (the picture below is from the Vatican website)
After our tour ended it was time for breakfast in the courtyard and I was pleasantly surprised. They bring the food, but you can choose what coffee you would like. For a plated mass-produced breakfast, the food was a lot better than others we’ve had. It was nice to sit down and get a little extra caffeine before going back through to see some of the rooms we missed.
This pineapple in the courtyard is 2,000 years old and was originally created to honor the fertility god Isis near the Pantheon. It was moved to outside Old St. Peters and then moved again to be in the courtyard of the Pope’s palace.
The sphere in the center of the courtyard is from 1990 and represents a new world emerging.
While eating we could see how busy the museum was getting, but we had no idea how bad it would be once we went back inside. We went back for round two at 10:45 and it was a bit miserable trying to navigate the museum. I think if we didn’t have our tour earlier we wouldn’t have enjoyed visiting this museum, the crowds were just too much. I had a list of some sculptures we missed on the tour so we tried to get from piece to piece as painlessly as possible.
In the Greek and Roman Sculpture area we first found Laocoon, the high priest of Troy who warned everyone not to let the Trojan horse in. He and his sons are being attacked by snakes because the gods wanted the Greeks to win. This sculpture was estimated to be created in 40-30 BC but was lost until 1506 when it was unearthed near the Colosseum. It was paraded through Rome before ending up at the Vatican and being the first piece of the museum.
Belvedere Torso dates back to the first century BC, but little is known about it except it was one of Michelangelo’s favorites.
The Round Room was modeled after the interior of the Pantheon and built around the giant purple porphyry marble bowl. The bowl was originally at Nero’s palace and it’s made from a single block of marble that was imported from Egypt. (I wasn’t exaggerating about the crowds)
After this room we were essentially back to where we started and went through the rooms we saw and a few more we skipped on the tour. It was such a different experience going through after the museum opened. We just had to shuffle along with the big tour groups and try to get around them when we could. We made it back to the Sistine Chapel one last time and soaked it all in, this time shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. Once we felt ready, we were able to exit right to a corridor that took us to the entrance of St. Peters bypassing security. We used this opportunity to climb the dome and walk around St. Peters again. Stayed tuned for our climb up St. Peters dome.
Posts in this series:
Florence
- Where to Stay & Eat
- Piazza Michelangelo & Ponte Vecchio
- Uffizi Gallery
- Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, Accademia
- Climbing the Duomo
- Duomo Museum, Bell Tower, & Baptistry
- Palazzo Vecchio & Tuscon Wine Tour
Rome
- Where to Stay & Eat
- Churches, Churches, & Churches Oh My!
- Borghese Gallery
- Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, & Pantheon
- St. Peter’s Basilica
- Victor Emmanuel Monument & Capitoline Museum
- Forum & Palatine Hill Tour
- Colosseum Tour
- Castel Sant’ Angelo
- Twilight Trastevere Rome Food Tour
