Wednesday 1 May 2013

Big Church, Lotsa Busts & Vatican on Speed.... Ree's POV

It is hard not to get sucked into the "must do" vortex when you get to a place so full of "must dos". Rome is chock full of them. Could spend 2 weeks here and still have a list. We poured over the Rome travel guide and the travel books we've accumulated and maps and websites and then headed out to deal with the hundreds of thousands of other touristos who have done exactly the same thing. The planning actually becomes not WHAT to see, but WHEN to get there to beat the queues and save a few Euros if possible. Turns out the best way to beat the queues is to spend MORE Euros.

THE BIG CHURCH - Our first strategy for beating the lines was to go late in the day - this is what the wise traveller types on the websites all say. Excellent.

Would hate to see what the lines are like in the morning then.

After having a Roman morning - ie - lazy breakfast, bit of food shopping, poking around the neighbourhood and up the Corso - we meandered into St Peter's Piazza to pop into the biggest church in the world. Not so much. The line was at least 500 people long - probably longer - and wound its way right across the face of the piazza all the way through the gorgeous Bernini columns (have a love affair with his work - he is just so clever) and up to the officious dudes who run the electronic scanners.

 

We made it through the scanners despite the wee pocket knife Drew had decided to bring with him this morning (argh!) and then veered slightly right instead of slightly left - no reason - and ended up in the line to climb the Culpa! It costs 2 euros more to take the lift and we are saving money so we took the, officially, 1 gazillion steps to the top - at first a fairly nice climb up wide marble sloping steps and then, after reaching a nice little balcony for a pretty terrific view from INSIDE the culpa down at the floor of St Peter's (and getting close up to the incredibly detailed mosaics of the dome), you continue shuffling out to a landing and then take a further 320,000 steps culminating in something like a dodgy ladder until you get to the tippy top and climb out onto the exterior of the dome. This second staircase is a lot more claustrophobia-inducing, particularly with 1000 people in front of you and 1000 people behind you all huffing and hot and moving particularly slowly.

They clearly didn't count the steps - there were definitely 320,000

 

 

 

 

 

AAAhhhhh - but the views!!!!! How much is a view worth?

This one was worth at least a gazillion steps.

Bernini's lovely columns were designed to be like arms opening to embrace the faithful.

Oooh - look at those lovely columns

After a relatively rapid decent - seems most punters were happy to take the lift down and therefore kindly left the stairs empty for the Dembos - we breathed in and entered the world's biggest and possibly most famous church.

St Peter's took over 120 years to build (strikes, demarcation disputes, dying architects and designers, couldn't settle on a decent painter...) 21 Popes presided over its construction over the years and 8 architects inherited and carried on the work. By the time it was finished it looked not a great deal like its original conception but it was still enormous - and that was the goal of Pope Julius II who planned it in the first place in the early 1500s. It is built on the exact site (apparently) of the buried bones of St Peter - very close to where he was martyred in 1st Century AD (not a pretty death apparently) by Emperor Nero. I wont give the entire history of the building - although I will say that I find it fascinating, particularly in the perspective of the pagan Romans, their Kings and then their Emperors and the various looters that arrived after their demise and all the other history that you literally fall over in this city.

I will also say, as a quick aside, that St Peter's is not a cathedral. Ha! To be a cathedral you need a bishop and St Peter's does not have one. The Pope is the bishop of Rome - and does preside over services at St Peter's reasonably regularly - but he actually has another church that he presides over as Bishop. Interesting. So it gets to be a Basilica which has a nice ring to it anyway.

I will also say that Michaelangelo did a splendid job on the dome - and in researching how to build such an enormous one at such a height he had to consider the dome of the Pantheon (one of only 3 impressive domes in western civilisation at that time) which it turns out had already been standing for 1500 years by the early 1600s. The Romans built it with concrete (didn't even know that existed BC!) and cleverly laced it with extra light pumice stone in order to make sure the weight of the dome did not make it unstable. Those dudes were amazing.

To get the most out of a trip inside St Peter's you definitely need a tour guide and we definitely did not feel like having one of those after climbing a gazillion steps in the heat - so we did the "quick look around tour - a la Dembo" so I could point out the Pieta to the kiddies and gaze at the ceiling and marvel at the magnitude of it all. I just like how big it is and how the light works through the roof. I don't find I get absorbed by the ornate details of the hundreds of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, effigies and other bits and pieces in there in the way that a more knowledgeable person might, because frankly, its all a bit much. Every new Pope wants to be remembered by building another wing or chapel or huge something inside the basilica and then putting his name on it and its all gotten too overwhelming. Plus the place is full to overflowing with touristos posing oddly in front of things I would wager a lot of them wouldn't know a tot about. Cynical? A bit.

 

We went in the afternoon to beat the crowds...

 

Thankfully Pieta remains quietly at the entrance on the right and you can gaze at it for ages without feeling inundated by the other stuff further inside. I found out that in 1972 some lunatic took to the Pieta with a geologist's hammer claiming to be The Lord Jesus Christ resurrected and took off Mary's arm and part of her nose (since replaced pretty well) - and that - embarrassingly he was Australian! He spent 2 years in psychatric care in Rome and was then shipped back to Oz. Now the Pieta stands well away from the crowd, carefully shielded from nutters and touristos and the Dembos.

 

I don't think I'd even heard of Capitalone Museum before last week. Thankfully a lot of the throng padding their way around Rome had also not read up on this place. It was mercifully empty-ish. Potentially this is because it's actually reasonably hard to find, tucked away behind a bevy of other subsequently built buildings. Its emptiness might also have had something to do with the fact that we arrived at 5.45 in the afternoon but I can't be sure. Museums in Rome are so laid back that they stay open until crazy late so the entire Roman holiday worked out remarkably well for us, because, as everyone knows, I struggle with early.

Capitoline has a groovy history. Rome is built on a bunch of hills. Each hill has it's own particular history - playing its part in the gathering shepherds and then feuding traders who settled here, the first communities and then eventually a kingdom. Each hill stood for something. Capitoline hill was/is the tallest of the hills and became the most sacred. On top of the hill, in about 500BC, the last of the roman kings built a temple for Jupiter - the most powerful of their pagan gods. When construction was underway a human skull was found - a "caput" in their language. The name "Capitoline" hill gets its name from the found skull and, in fact, the word "Capitol" we use today comes from this particular hill. From Rome's inception, this spot was the religious and then political centre as rulers presided from on high. I think that's very cool.

I digress! The Capitoline Museum is the oldest museum in the world - having displayed works of art since the mid 1700s. It is full to the brim with extraordinary sculptures and probably lots of other great stuff too, but we particularly wanted to see the sculptures. The collection is predominantly ancient roman with some medieval and renaissance work - but we were mostly interested in the ancient stuff. Drew, if I'm honest, was not really interested in squat but he didn't complain too much and did find some cool marble things to sit on while we looked around. The room we were after was the Hall of the Emperors and contains busts of all the roman emperors and really incredible ones at that. When you consider that busts were like polaroids for the Romans, there was quite a few made of each emperor - so collecting the best of each is some task. They have been placed in order around the room, like photos of previous town mayors in local government buildings - except SOOOOO much more inspiring.

These heads are unbelievably lifelike - down to the frown lines and puffy eyes and looks of stoicism and even weariness on some of them. They look like real people, not simply idealised versions of themselves. I'm sure some poetic licence was used, they can't all have been vaguely handsome dudes with reasonably proportioned features - but still incredibly impressive.

 

 

 

There were hundreds of other sculptures that caught our eyes but without a guide we were kind of flying blind. Not a particularly well labelled collection - but quite amazing anyway.

 

Is it demeaning to preside over the largest connected empire in western civilisation and then find yourself with a seagull standing on your head? Possibly. Bronze of Marcus Aurelius circa 176AD - bird not included

 

A race through The Vatican might sound like something from a Dan Brown novel - but for us it was a tour like no other... and we loved it. I do want to give cudos where it is due here - if it wasn't for a super human effort by ME we wouldnt have had nearly such a great experience! I managed to get up EARLY! We were in the line by 7.30AM (90 minutes BEFORE the ticket office opens). We had read a lot about the length of the queue for The Vatican and knew the difference between a 7.30AM spot and an 8.00AM spot was pretty big. Even as we jumped out of our cab (indulgence #1 on a quite indulgent day) there were people jog-walking from everywhere to get in line. We would have been around 50th in the queue even then. But then a nice chap (who might just as easily have been a bit dodgy, but luckily wasn't) approached us with an offer... "woulda you lika to taka a toura of The Vatican Museum thisa morning and get in at 8 o'clock instead of 9 o'clock. You will be the firsta ones into the Sistina Chapel." Well we were tempted. We haggled a bit and he agreed the kids could go free which clinched it for us. Although we still spent a stack to get in it was definitely worth it. The nice chap passed us onto his boss who introduced us to our guide. Turns out we ended up with the coolest tour guide ever - Rich from Pittsburgh - total dude. He has lived in Rome for 15 years - came here orginally to study theology and art history - and never left. He was unbelievably knowledgeable and very passionate about just about everything and what it all meant and it was impossible not to get swept up in it all - and he was a crazy fast talker - like a whirlwind of social, political, cultural, art and religious history. And... he was really funny. So, the doors opened for special people at 8.00AM, and our little tour group of 20 found itself in a mob of 400 other special people on various other special tours, but our leader was nimble and tall and swept us along at lightening speed. He pitched his information at the kids as well as the adults and for the first time I can remember I was on a tour I wished wouldn't end.

As to the museum... The powers that be were clever enough to not just collect religious artifacts but also pagan items from the pre-christian era so there is a fantastic collection detailing all of Roman history.

Touristos are not allowed to talk in the Sistene Chapel at all so now they have large posters of the ceiling and main frescos in the beautiful Vatican garden so that guides can point out features in advance. This does not stop the gestapo-like guards regularly shouting "SHHHHHHH!!!!" and clapping their hands in the chapel in a seemingly unfriendly manner.

Michelangelo did not love working for the Popes as he found them demanding and difficult and so only agreed to do the Sistine Chapel if he was allowed free reign on content. He even painted a couple of faces of less-liked Bishops into the more negative biblical roles so as to eternalise his opinion of them. He also painted in his own empty skin on the Last Judgement fresco - as a testament to how he felt the project had left him.

Ever get that feeling???

 

Even though we were "in" to The Vatican Museum an hour ahead of the general crowd, there was still a tremendous mass of people surging toward the chapel as groups converged from the various other rooms. You really couldn't help feeling like controlled, multilingual cattle. The kids coped really well though considering all of this and when we were finally ejected out the other end had to treat them to a iceypole.

Doing the Tourist Shuffle
Even the floors are beautiful artworks

 

Moral.... get a guide. (But get a good one)

x

 

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