Europe Trip: Italy > Rome - VATICAN CITY! (feat. St Peter Square, Vatican Museum...04/06/07)

Reaching Vatican City soon...can see the dome of St. Peter's Basilica from afar? :)Vatican City, officially State of the Vatican City (Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae; Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano), is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. At approximately 44 hectares (108.7 acres), it is the smallest independent state in the world. [taken from Wikipedia]St. Peter's BasilicaSt. Peter's Square

According to my tour guide, the present Pope stays in the room whose window is located on the upper row, third one from the right. Every Sunday morning he will wave down to the crowd from his window and giving them his greetings for the day.

To cut short the 2-hour (or more) queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica and Sistine Chapel, I joined an on-the-spot tour which was looking for customers then. This kind of tour group is organised by the local individuals who are NOT under any of the Vatican Museum or St. Peter's management but just outsiders. They hired people who studies or know the chapels well enough to be tour guide, get a license to be able to travel within St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum, and lias with the staff in those places to offer discounted group tickets.

How this group earned is that they will charge any interested tourists who does not want to waste time queueing up for hours (the longest queue I have ever seen among all the other places I visited in Europe) at a slightly higher price. For my case, I paid EUR49 for the approx 3-hour package which includes admissions to Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica, plus an English-speaking tour guide. If you calculate the total amount needed to pay on your own, it will also add up to about EUR 35 for all the admission fees and rental fees of audio guide.

Paying a bit more to save 2 hours to queue up and have a tour guide to answer your personal questions and highlight the important things to look out for in those chapels and museum...don't you think it is quite worth it? :P

Gelato, originated from Italy, is the most popular ice cream worldwide. This ice cream store near the Vatican Museum is awarded to be one of the top 5 ice cream in Rome. I can't really tell if this is true but judging by the crowded store, the newspaper clippings inside, the huge scoop of ice cream at low cost, and the smoothness and freshness of the ice cream...well it definitely worth every penny and time spent in queueing up for it! :DEven paying for the tour doesn't guarantee a queue-free way to get into the places. The only priviledge we get is that we just need to queue up for one place instead of two -- the Vatican Museum. From there, we will have the access to Sistine Chapel as well as St. Peter's Basilica. Unlike the public, they will have to queue up for Vatican Museum AND again for St. Peter's Basilica to access to all three places...so sometimes you must think twice ya? *wink*Finally the Vatican Museums!The Vatican Museums (Musei Vaticani) are the public art and sculpture museums in the Vatican City, which display works from the extensive collection of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Julius II founded the museums in the 16th century. The Sistine Chapel and the Stanz della Segnatura decorated by Raphael are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums. As of November 2006, it was visited by more than 4,000,000 people for the year.The garden of Vatican MuseumBefore we get started to tour around the place, our tour guide has to go through the history of the great arts of both Vatican Museum, Raphael's Rooms and the Sistine Chapel. One reason for this is being silence is supposed to be observed as we enter the place that is deemed holy. Another reason is that there is total restriction on taking of photos and that, especially for Sistine Chapel, the place will be too crowded or the group will be too distracted by the great art that you will not have the time to do all those explanations.

Well, I confess the anticipation gets me really all excited about this whole tour! :DDRoman sculpture, tombstones, and inscriptions are pretty much everywhere as you can see for yourself here...Maybe you will get sick of seeing the same things over and over again, but to think that there were man who can create such great pieces of art in those times, you certainly will learn to be much more appreciative. :)The ancient Europeans, like the French, had once loved Egyptian arts very much as well. It is not hard to find pieces of them in the European museum still. Here're two guardian statues guardian the tomb of someone great in the past here...Every part of here is made of marble and precious stones. Sometimes the question just came into my mind: Would you be happier to be buried in a tomb that is so grand, or would you rather be buried somewhere quiet but at least you won't be displayed to the eyes of the public?This is one VERY special statue that I have ever seen so far...want to know why?Look carefully at their eyes!

They are made of a shinny white and black stone that make them look like real...or even scarier at night if they ever reflects any light in the dark...The gallery of sculptures and statues......the ceiling of marvellous paintings and artworks......the arch of the doorway exquisitely decorated with marbles and stones and gold and silver......or the gallery of weave cloth paintings...or so the correct name for these are what makes such a museum worth going isn't it?

The creator of this cloth painting purposely used the striking red strings to weave the image of Jesus so that he can be recognised immediately by the viewers as he addressed the crowd. This is certainly not just required skills...but absolutely great wisdom too... d(,")b