You don’t think Rome as wet, but it rained today steadily until about two, and hard. Fortunately, we spent most of the time inside looking at the Vatican’s sumptuous museums. Of course, the Sistine Chapel is most famous, a small church with ceilings painted by Michelangelo in the early years of the 16th century. The church itself is gloomy, only a few small windows at the top, but the frescoes high in the ceiling were striking their majestic sweep across the length of the nave. Paintings by Botticelli and other artists climb the walls, but they look dingy compared to the Michelangelos, which have been recently cleaned to reveal a brilliance unsuspected by critics—and some say, unsuitable for the original intentions of the artist.
Canvassed scaffolding still shrouds about 1/5 of the ceiling, under cleaning, but the famous painting “God Creating Adam,” with the finger almost touching, is available for viewing, and seeing it for the first time is like seeing the Mona Lisa—you’ve seen it in pictures or characters so much you think you should know it already, as if you’ve already been here.
The crowed squeezes your view of the Sistine Chapel, as it does everywhere in the Vatican Museums, especially massive tour groups, which clog doorways and block views, a great annoyance to the individual. However, there’s bound to be crowds—after all, this is one of the world’s greatest museums.
Guards blew whistles to ward off errant tourists, and no one could go anywhere except roped off areas, the herd of cattle routine, which I detest, but it’s one of those times which it’s worth feeling like part of a herd to see these famous treasures.
Actually, I was more impressed than the Sistine Chapel, or the dark and small “Raphael Rooms” (painting by), with the less famous “map gallery”—a hall at least the size of a football field, with dozens of paintings between massive gold-leaved crenellations of the ceiling, and maps of the world’s great countries—as they were then—on the walls. I’ve never seen a larger and more imposing single room, even the hall of mirrors at Versailles. It must be the largest, and St. Peter’s Basilica is the largest Catholic Church in the world.
We visited that yesterday, after waiting all morning while it was closed to receive what a lady at a souvenir shop said was “a visiting head of state” to see the Pope. We found out in the paper later that the “head” was actually Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s “Solidarity” union.
My mother was disappointed we hadn’t waited around behind the crowd barrier to get a glimpse of Lech, I didn’t much care. I’m not very interested in seeing celebrities.
—April 21, 1989, Rome
OtD 