A Roman Adventure: Vatican City

Vatican City from St. Peter's Dome

Oh Italy, you did it again! Imagine walking five minutes out your hotel door, passing palm trees and gelato stands along the way, and bam, out pops an old ancient tower and then you peek down another street and the Colosseum waves hello in the morning sun. Rome, a land of enticing artifacts, original paintings, endless gelato and pasta, and history grander than any other city, did not let us down. Our three days in Rome proved to be nothing less than amazing, and here is part one of our Roman adventure.

 Arrival

We started our journey in the early afternoon on Friday, October 12th and flew out of the Karlsruhe Baden-Baden airport at 6:00 pm. After a smooth and quick 1.5 hour flight with RyanAir, we arrived to the Rome Ciampino airport and took a 40 minute shuttle to the Termini rail station in the center of Rome. After looking at the map, we headed in the direction of our hotel and arrived ten minutes later. Our home for the next three nights, Julie de Maison, was on a quiet street tucked behind the Italian Ministry. After checking into the guest house and receiving a recommendation from our host, Derek and I strolled down the cobbled street to a little Italian restaurant with all kinds of Italian charm and cuteness. Our first meal in Rome included round macaroni noodles with creamy sheep and ricotta cheese for me, and spaghetti carbonara for Derek. It tasted scrumptious, especially accompanied by some very cheap, tasty Italian vino rosso. After finishing dinner close to eleven, we strolled around the area and then called it a night.

Vatican City

Pope's Quarters on the top right corner

Saturday was the day that never ended, in a very good way. We awoke early and after a small breakfast at the hotel, walked through the main streets of Rome and crossed the Tiber River to the great St. Peter's Square in the heart of Vatican City. Once in the square, we found it impressively outlined with many, many pillars topped by statues of saints resting above with an ancient Egyptian obelisk towering in the middle at 25 meters. The shape of the square represents the arms of the church reaching out to its people, and we even saw the Pope's quarters with the windows open, a sign that he was home.

I pre-ordered Vatican Museum tickets online and after a 15 minute walk from the square to the entrance, we bypassed a very long line and started our tour in the overly-crowded museum. Derek and I are not fond of many museums and have really only been inside a few during our German stay, but the Vatican Museum made the list especially because of the final destination, the Sistine Chapel.

Derek in the Hall of Maps

We started the tour in the Egyptian room, where we saw well-preserved mummies and statues of ancient gods and then migrated through a courtyard containing highly regarded sculptures and many old bathtubs. We passed into a hall containing a gigantic water basin, probably used for bathing, that belonged to the emperor Nero. An infamous emperor, Nero ordered the building of a luxurious and extravagant palace for himself, and pieces of the palace are scattered throughout the museum. The museum's rooms and halls used to be pope palaces and are painted and adorned with sculptures, tapestries, maps, etc.

One of my favorite halls was the Hall of Tapestries from the School of Raphael. The tapestries represented many moment's of Christ's life and were astonishingly huge. Another favorite was the Hall of Maps where one of the popes commissioned that all Italian regions be painted onto the walls. After about an hour and a half, we arrived to the Stanze di Raffaello, or Room of Raphael, where between 1510-1511, the famous artist Raphael was commissioned to decorate several rooms in the pope's quarters. One of Raphael's most famous paintings and a prime example of Italian Renaissance art is the "School of Athens," a painting depicting the most famous philosophers of ancient times such as Plato and Aristotle. I had studied this painting in an high school art history class, and to see it in person was amazing. But not as amazing as the Sistine Chapel.

Raphael's School of Athens

Along with the crowds, we shuffled into the Sistine Chapel (Cappella Sistina)  and tried our best to take it all in. After finding seats along the side of the church (luckily), we read through our travel guide that explained the meanings of each painting. No photos were allowed, but this is how I would describe it:

To think that one man, Michelangelo, completed (almost) the entire church by himself is beyond astounding; he created 5,000 square feet of frescoes. But to truly look at the meaning of the frescoes in combination with my faith and everything I studied growing up was, for me, a very moving experience. The ceiling was covered in scenes of all important biblical events before Christ. The wall above the altar was a larger-than-life mural of the Final Judgement. All of Michelangelo's famous paintings were together in one room and they were powerful. There was so much going on in this small church and so much to see that really, to fully comprehend everything, you would need to study the church for a month, or a year. Breathtaking is an understatement.

Decorative ceilings in the Vatican Museum

Collecting fresh water from one the fountains in the Vatican

Fresco-ed ceiling in the Vatican

Egyptian god Anubis

Nero's water basin sitting upon a mosaic floor

One of the tapestries from "Episodes of the Passion"

After leaving the Sistine Chapel through a door "only for tour groups" we skipped the line for St. Peter's Basilica and headed straight for the dome. After a short ride in an elevator, we arrived half way up the dome and had a close-up look at the beautiful mosaic wall before a snail-paced climb of 300 steps to the top of the dome. After a quick look at Vatican City in the rain, we headed back down the stairs and took cover inside the grandest Catholic church in the world, St. Peter's Basilica. A little history: St Peter's is built on what used to be Nero's Circus 2,000 years ago where it is believed that St. Peter, the first pope of the Catholic church, was crucified upside down. The altar of St. Peter's Basilica is built directly above the place of St. Peter's tomb. The basilica houses beautiful sculptures, paintings, and mosaics and it's no wonder that this church is the grandest of all. My favorite sculpture was Michelangelo's Pietà, a striking and delicately carved marble piece of Mary holding Jesus.

Here are some photos of St. Peter's:

The Altar of St. Peter's

One of the many naves in the church

Michelangelo's Pietà

Standing in the square

Swiss Guards guarding the Vatican

The crooked staircase winding to the top of the dome

Up-close mosaic near the dome inside St. Peter's

Derek standing next to the mosaic

A look down onto the Sistine Chapel

Trevi Fountain at Night

And after out Vatican tour, the day was not over. The rain drifted away and Derek and I found a gelateria on a corner of a picturesque Roman street. Oh gelato. Have you tried it? There are so many flavors to choose from and you can hardly ever go wrong. Anyway, after our gelato lunch, we wondered the streets of Rome in the light mist. We strolled over to Piazza Navona, took shelter under the awning of the Pantheon as it rained, strolled past Parliament, after stopping for a Sicilian cannoli, and ended up at the oh-so-romantic-and-overly-crowded Trevi Fountain.

We explored a nearby marketplace and purchased a beer and single-serving wine glass and settled onto the damp concrete seating surrounding the fountain. People watching is quite the sport, and I particularly enjoyed the annoying scam artists with large Polaroid cameras who would offer to take a photo with a couple's camera and then one with the Polaroid. Then the scammer would ask for money for the Polaroid.

The sun went down and after throwing some coins into the fountain, backwards to appease the legend, our appetites raved. We headed in the direction of our hotel and within ten minutes settled into a lively restaurant described in my guide book as "the Italian attempt at a German beer hall."

Derek in front of Castel Sant'Angelo

Trevi Fountain

Cannoli Time

Italian charm

I indulged in the chocolate, Derek in the fig

Wine time at dinner

After dinner, we decided to view Rome by night. We walked passed the Roman Forum, all the way to the Colosseum and Arch of Constantine. This tiring yet fulfilling day allowed us to sleep sound that night, and we awoke early the next day (my birthday!) for another Roman adventure. More to come in the next blog....so stay tuned!