Mike had arranged for a tour of the Vatican Gardens, the Sistine Chapel, and the Basilica of St. Peter with a private guide for the four of us plus their friends Bryan and Kathy from Chicago.
Ready for our tour!
First stop: The Vatican Gardens. Above, the "Secret Garden."
An ornately carved building that was once the "Summer Palace" of the Pope. Approximately 220 meters from the "Winter Palace." Do you think he noticed a change of weather when he moved from one to the other?
The Dome of St. Peter's Basilica as seen from the Vatican Gardens.
The Sistine Chapel from the Gardens. The plain exterior belies the artistic marvels hidden inside.
Statue of St. Peter offering a gesture of blessing toward his Basilica from the Gardens.
The "Dragon Fountain" with the eagle on top, a symbol from the papal coat of arms.
The "French Garden."
Tim next to a sago palm outside the French Garden.
This is a replica of the Grotto of Lourdes, site of perhaps the best known miracle in all of Catholic history. The Virgin Mary appeared to an illiterate farm girl and explained to her the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. That farm girl shared her vision with the world and was eventually canonized as St. Bernadette.
Par of the "Italian Garden."
Another view of the Italian garden showing its symmetry.
Statue of Our Lady of Fatima, another appearance by Mary, this time to three young girls in Portugal in 1917. Supposedly in this vision, Mary told the girls "Three Secrets." She predicted the end of World War I and the start of World War II, as well as the fall of Communist Russia. But the girls got sick with flu during the 1918 epidemic, and they died before they could explain the third secret.
The tower of Radio Vatican located in the Gardens broadcasts the Catholic message to the world in 44 lanuages.
On to the Sistine Chapel through this vaulted corridor.
This mosaic was taken from the floor of an ancient Roman house and re-laid in the Vatican. In fact, many of the marble floors and much of the bronze in the Vatican were recycled from ancient Roman buildings.
Still walking to the Sistine Chapel. The ornately carved ceiling in this part of the corridor is actually trompe l'oeil, painted to look like carved moldings.
This ceiling however is in fact ornately embellished with carved figures and molding. And no, we are still not at the Sistine Chapel.
Photos are not allowed at all in the Sistine Chapel. Our tour guide showed us photos of all the paintings in the chapel on a video presentation before we went in so we would know the significance of what we were seeing. This is the wall above the altar in the chapel showing Michelangelo's vision of The Final Judgement.
While Michelangelo was painting the frescoes, Pope Sixtus IV (Sixtus=Sistine Chapel) would view the works with one of his aides. When the aide repeatedly criticized the work, Michelangelo took revenge by painting the aide's face on the figure in the lower right. Hard to see in this view, but he is in the lowest part of Hell with a snake (presumably the Devil) coiled around his body and biting him a most sensitive place. So much for pissing off Michelangelo!
Entrance to St. Peter's Basilica, the largest Christian church in the world. Each of the great cathedrals of Christendom are smaller than St. Peter's and would fit completely inside St. Peter's, including the Notre Dame in Paris, and the great cathedral at Rheims.
Incredible marble stonework and statuary.
Statue of St. Peter. It is considered good luck to touch his feet. Over the years, so many people have filed past that his fee are now shiny and flat as swim flippers!
The massive altar of St. Peters Basilica.
The great dome of St. Peter's, Michelangelo's crowning architectural achievement.
It is hard to appreciate the scale of this church. The alphabetical letters on the gold band around the ceiling are actual 7 feet tall.
At first glance, this looks like a painting. It is actually a massive mosaic. The Vatican maintains its own mosaic shop, which uses 27,000 different color tones of stone and glass.
Back outside the Basilica. Behind me, St. Peter's square with is flanking colonnades and distinctive Egyptian obelisk.
The entrance to St. Peter's Basilica was added to the church after Michelangelo died. Standing on the top are Jesus and his disciples. Michelangelo would be disappointed to see that the new addition completely obscures his beautiful dome from sight.
After lunch, it's on to The Pantheon.
The entrance to the Pantheon is classical Roman architecture. It was originally built about 100 AD as a pagan church honoring Jove.
The interior of the church is a huge cylinder 43.3 meters in diameter and capped with a massive dome. The walls are 6 feet thick at the base, and diminish in thickness as the structure rises.
At the top of the dome of the Pantheon, the famous oculus, 27 feet in diameter and open to the sky. And, yes, rain does fall into the Pantheon. Fortunately, the builders made the floor slightly concave and strategically placed 22 holes in the floor to drain the rainwater.
The Christians wasted no time in pulling down the pagan statues and putting up their own religious decoration.
The Christian altar where a massive statue of Jove once stood.
And now enough of musty old buildings. Time for cocktails!
Brings back memories! Wasn't it fun trying to stay up with your tour group through the corridor to the Sistine Chapel? Our tourguide had a small boa attached to a stick so you could see where she was and ATTEMPT to keep up and listen at the same time.
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