The Vatican
For many people, and not just catholics, a visit to the Vatican is the highlight of any vacation in Rome. Located entirely within the city of Rome is Vatican City, the Holy See, seat of the papacy of the Roman Catholic church. Vatican City has been recognized as an independent state by the Italian government since 1929.

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photo © 2003 Elaine K. Beckham

St. Peter's Basilica

Stand well back and look at the people climbing the steps and entering the church to get the scale of this enormous structure. Mere mortals appear shrunk to miniature as St. Peter's looms over them. This is the grandest, the most impressive of all the great cathedrals of Europe. The largest church in the world, the Basilica of San Pietro sits at the apex of the equally enormous Piazza San Pietro in Vatican City. Flanked by an eliptical colonnade of 284 pillars and 140 statues of saints and martyrs, at the center of the Piazza stands an Egyptian obelisk brought from Heliopolis by Emperor Caligular.

The first architect of the present basilica was Donato Bramante, who began work in 1506. Raphael, Frea Giocondo da Verona and Antonio da Sangallo continued the work after Bramante's death.

Michelangelo took over the project in 1574 at the age of 72, adhering to Bramante's original plans for the completion of the apse, and designing the 435ft high dome. In all, San Pietro took more than 100 years to build. The front façade with its huge travertine columns was designed by Carlo Maderno and added in 1614.

To enter St. Peter’s you must be appropriately dressed… no shorts or bare arms, skirts should be knee length. The enormous scale of the basilica must be experienced to be appreciated… you have entered God’s domain and it dwarfs you, as it was designed to do. The basilica can hold 60,000 people and was created to emphasize the glory and majesty of the Almighty in stark contrast to man’s insignificance. Its massive size was also a political statement to visiting dignitaries, an exquisite and elegant statement of papal power and Rome’s pre-eminence in Christendom.

To the right as you enter, is Michelangelo’s Pietà… a youthful and serene Mary cradling the lifeless body of Christ. Unlike the artist’s epic later works, it is perhaps the one thing in the basilica slightly smaller than your expectation. Or perhaps again, it is the relative scale of everything else. Behind glass today, as it was vandalized in 1972, it is the only work of Michelangelo’s which he signed. The Pietà is poignant and beautiful, heart-wrenching in its delicacy and fine detail; breathtaking when you know that Michelangelo was still in his early twenties when he created it.

The centerpiece of the basilica is Bernini’s extraordinary gilded bronze canopy, the baldacchino. It towers over the papal altar, supported by carved spiraling columns almost thirty meters high. The altar, where only the pope may celebrate mass, stands over the tomb of Saint Peter.

photo © 2003 Elaine K. Beckham

St. Peter's Dome

Michelangelo’s dome soars over 350 feet above, designed, at the maestro’s insistence, to let in the light. You can climb to the walkway around the base of the dome for a bird’s eye view of the magnificent basilca below. From there you can walk the spiral staircase to the top of the dome, known as the lantern, where you will step out to gaze down as if from heaven upon the Vatican Palace and its manicured gardens with the papal crest botanically embedded in the lawn, and beyond that, all of Rome spread at your feet.

The Vatican Museums
There is a lot of ground to cover inside the vast realm of the Musei Vaticani. Depending on your available time and interests, you will inevitably have to leave some of it for your next visit. If your time in Rome is really limited, see the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel, and under no circumstances miss St. Peter's Basilica.

The Gregorian Etruscan Museum was founded in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and contains objects which have been excavated from the ancient cities of Etruria... evidence of their flourishing civilization includes ceramics and bronzes, silver and gold jewelry and artistic adornments. There is also a large collection of Greek vases which were found in Etruscan tombs.

The Gregorian Egyptian Museum was founded in 1839 by Gregory XVI and consists of nine rooms which house ancient Egyptian monuments and artifacts, plus two rooms containing archeological finds from ancient Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine.

The Pinacoteca
The Vatican Art Gallery is a chronological collection of priceless art contained in eighteen rooms, spanning from early primitive twelfth and thirteenth century, to the nineteenth century. Along the way you will encounter many of the great masters... Giotto, Raphael, Veronese, Leonardo and Caravaggio among many others.

The Raphael Rooms
Known as The Raphael Rooms, the Stanze di Raffaello is a suite of four rooms which were originally the apartments of Pope Julius II. They are painted in magnificent fresco by the artist Raphael, extravagantly decorated to banish the memory of Julius's predecessor, the detested Alexander Borgia. The Hall of Constantine, The Room of Heliodorus, The Room of the Segnatura (Signature), and The Room of the Fire of the Borgo.

The Vatican Library was founded by Nicholas V (1447-55) out of a desire to create a center of available knowledge for the clerics and scholars who inhabited the papal palace. Sixtus V (1585-90) commissioned the present building from Domenico Fontana, who built a suite of gorgeously frescoed rooms with large windows to create a bright, well-lit environment for the study of the classics. The library's collection is vast and includes hundreds of handwritten Latin and Greek texts, copies of great classics in philosophy and history, theology and canon law, preserved along with fascinating margin notes added by scholars and thinkers from medieval times to the Renaissance.

The Sistine Chapel
Named for Pope Sixtus IV who commissioned it, the Sistine Chapel is one of the world's most spectacular and rightly famous works of art. The chapel was constructed between 1475 and 1481 and during subsequent years its walls frescoed with scenes from the lives of Christ and Moses by a roster of celebrated artists that include Botticelli, Perugino, Rosselli and Ghirlandaio.

It is the ceiling, however, for which the Sistine Chapel has been singled out since it was painted... a grueling four year period of Michelangelo's life during which he achieved complete mastery of the fresco form in covering the barrel-vaulted ceiling, with not just gargantuan figures in very difficult foreshortened aspect, but a whole complex architecture for them to inhabit which divides old from new testament scenes, one thread of narrative, one branch of heredity from another. Doubting that he could complete such a formidable task, Michelangelo refused this commission many times before finally agreeing to undertake it.

After centuries of accumulated soot and grime had taken its toll on the Sistine Chapel, a painstaking, scientific restoration has brought back original colors and hues, so that we may see it today as Michelangelo created it, in all its magnificent splendor.

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