Day 3 Part 1 - The Vatican City

Day 2 - Leaving the Country

We woke up early and caught the metro to the Vatican City, the smallest country in the world.  First stop was the Vatican Museum.  It houses the art that has been collected by the Catholic Church over the years.  The sheer scope of the museum is staggering.  This hallway of marble busts shows just how overwhelming the museum can be.  At times your eyes just start to glaze over.  To truly appreciate the collections that span the several miles it would take multiple return visits.

I think I've got the look down.

This shot of the hallway of maps, shows just how amazing the museum is.  It's not just collections of art that make the museum significant, it's the museum itself.  In nearly every hallway and room, you had to remember to look up.

Walking along one of the hallways in the musem, I glanced out the window and took this photo of the dome of St Peter's Basilica.  You can see how close the two buildings are together.   More signifcantly, you can see the nondescript brown building that makes up the lower left corner of the photo.  That is west end of the Sistine Chapel.  The chapel, with its famous ceiling, is normally part of the museum, but was closed when we came through.  They gave us some lame excuse about a group of Cardinals choosing a new Pope. 

Probably one of the more famous museum exits in the world.

Once we finished with the museum, we traveled around to St Peter's Square.  The simple fact is this.  Pictures and words can not do justice to the sheer size of these buildings.  You can look at photos all day long, but when you walk into St Peter's for the first time, it is simply mind numbing at the scope and scale.  It's similar to staring into the Grand Canyon.  At some point your brain just gives up trying to comprehend the size.

Resting our weary legs on the pews.

The interior of the dome.  Once again, it is almost impossible to fathom the size of that dome.

 They had set up this scaffolding in the back of the square to accommodate the news crews that had traveled from all around the world to cover the papal conclave.

 Michelangelo's Pieta.  One of his more famous sculptures.  This was one of the few works that is protected by bullet proof glass.  The church felt it was necessary after a crazy man attacked the statue with a hammer in 1972.

Rest up.  For our next post, we are going to climb the dome.