Musei Vaticani

From our hotel, we piled into four cabs and shortly arrived at the Piazza Pio XII in front of St. Peter's. We had a short hunt for our tour guide, Walter, whom we eventually met at the center of Piazza San Pietro, near the obelisk.

St. Peter's Square

We decided to tour the Vatican Museum and see the Sistine Chapel before venturing inside St. Peter's Basilica. Walter led us north and then west along the outside of the Vatican wall to the entrance to the museum. Walking this route reminded me of Mission: Impossible III, and I half expected to spot Tom Cruise sneakily creeping over the wall.

The walk to the entrance took about ten minutes. Typically, visitors pay €15 to enter, but those of us lucky students were able to use our school IDs to enter for only €8. Definitely a nice perk!

Just outside the entrance, we stopped to take in a view of the basilica dome and a portion of the Vatican gardens.

A small peek at the Vatican Gardens

Walter then led us through a large courtyard to the hall of statutes, which held an endless number of busts and sarcophagi dating to ancient Rome. He called it the Hollywood of ancient Rome, because all the busts depicted famous Romans.

The Hall of Statues

We walked outside to the octagonal courtyard, which held a number of Roman baths made from different types of marble and a series of statues and columns. The most famous sculpture in the courtyard was definitely the most impressive. Laocoön and His Sons, depicts a man fighting two snakes, sent as punishment by the goddess Athena, as his sons cowering on each side. This beautiful work of artistry conveys the anguish of the subjects and is incredible to behold. It's hard to imagine the painstaking work that went into creating such a complex and detailed sculpture.

Laocoön and His Sons

From there we went through another area full of statues dedicated to animals, the "inspiration from nature," Walter explained, which led to a series of other rooms housing everything from urns to candelabras to tapestries.

We were directed through the rooms of Raphael, the famous artist, who used colors and light like none other. The most prominent fresco, the School of Athens, is enormous and absolutely beautiful. The fresco depicts prominent philosophers, with Plato and Aristotle in the center.

School of Athens

The figure leaning on the box in the center of the fresco was painted in Michelangelo's likeness, after Raphael saw his work in the Sistine Chapel.

One of the four Raphael rooms had at one time been the bedroom for the pope. With frescoes completely covering the walls and ceilings, it seemed an overwhelming setting for a bedroom, and I came to the conclusion that with such detail everywhere, it must have been incredibly distracting. How do you sleep when there's so much to look at?

Liberation of St. Peter by an Angel {Source}

We concluded with the Sistine Chapel, a perfect last stop to the tour.

Now, if I thought the Raphael rooms were detailed, then no word exists to describe the frescoes in the chapel. Just the sheer scale of each panel, the size of the entire room and the color and contrast in each segment left everyone in awe. You could spend hours looking around the chapel and still not see everything. Unfortunately, with throngs of people waiting to gander a view of the Creation of Adam and the security guards silencing the crowd and keeping people from taking pictures, everyone must settle for just a few minutes of time beholding the masterpieces.