Tour of the Vatican city, the capital of Roman Catholicism, and the Castel Sant' Angelo the main fort of the Vatican City. Of most significance is St Peters Basilica, the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, which all have a special place in the history of the Vatican city and of Rome itself. While the Vatican museum contains the riches of the world, and provide access to the famous Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica and Square provides the home for the Papal Altar as well as spectacular views of Rome from the top of the Dome

We arrived at the queue to the Vatican museum entrance around about 9am from the Ottaviano Metro station. The queue stretched around the corner and halfway towards Via s. Veneiro. However, my sister noted that this was considered good compared to the peak tourist season. And, after waiting for a brief 15 minutes, we were on our way through the entrance and security checks into the Vatican Museum, with high hopes that there would be lots of interesting things to see than just the Sistine Chapel, or the large array of treasures and art scattered throughout the museum. From first experiences, it is hard to know where to begin and what is important in the Vatican Museums, but like the tour groups, I've decided to condense the tour and only illustrate the main points.

We first entered the Egyptian Museum via the Simonetti Stairway. This contained various artefacts from Ancient Egypt arranged by Father L.M. Ungarelli. Briefly, each of the nine rooms contain monuments, statues, paintings, reliefs and sarcophagi of Ancient Egypt. More significantly, a reconstruction of an Egyptian sanctuary that was built in Emperor Hadrian's Villa, can be found in Room III. The sanctuary represented Egypt being flooded by the waters of the Nile. And proceeding to the Terrace of the Hemicycle (just outside Room V) was a spectacular view of the Court of the Pigna.

Next was the Pio-Clementine Museum. The most striking part was the Octagonal Court with its fountain and Greek and Roman statues. In the corners of the court are the cabinets, and starting clockwise from the entrance, the Cabinet of the Apollo, the Cabinet of the Laocoon, the Cabinet of the Hermes and the Cabinet of Canova. The first and third cabinets house Roman copies of original Greek statues while the second contains an original statue of Lacoon, priest of Apollo. Finally the fourth cabinet contains statues by Antonio Canova. Between the cabinets are more statues, but the one
that is most important is the reclining figure of the River God, Tigris, which is located between the Cabinet of the Apollo and Lacoon.

Moving on from the Octagonal through the adjoining rooms of statues and sculptures until we reached one room containing a massive table-like basin made out of Porphry. Known as the Round room, the room was designed by Michelangelo Simonetti and built in 1780, and it is a wonder how they carved and constructed the basin that now sits in the middle of this room. Accompanying the basin are statues of Greek gods as well as the head of Hadrian, Emperor of Rome. Many of the Greek statues are again copies made by the Romans. Since there were tour groups around the room, we lost
interest and proceeded onward.

As there were more and more people entering the museum and we wanted to get to the Sistine Chapel, we decided to race through anything that did not look interesting. Thus, we rushed through the Gallery of the Candelabra/ Room of the Biga, but stopping briefly to look at the tapestries in Gallery of the Tapestries and the forty or so frescoes of maps in Gallery of Maps, only to rush through the Apartment of St Pius V. However, we were forced to pause and admire the large showcase of books at the centre of the Room of the Immaculate Conception. The bound volumes were actually given to Pius IX in honour of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. At the top of the shelf is a small statuette, but I'm not sure who it is suppose to be.

Just when we thought we could race through more, we encountered the Raphael Stanze. This was a series of rooms containing frescoes by the artist Raphael and his assistants. We first entered the Room of the Incendio, a dining room with frescoes displaying the accomplishments of the popes Leo X, Leo III and Leo IV. Next to this room is the small chapel of Urban VIII, decorated with the fresco depicting the Deposition of Christ. The next room was the Room of the Segnatura, a library and study of Julius II, thus many of the frescoes had a heavy theme on literature, philosophy, justice and theology, with the fresco containing Greek philosophers Plato, Socrates and Aristotle in the School of Athens. The third room, Room of Heliodorus, contains frescoes of St Peter and the story of Heliodorus (who was apparently sent to steal treasure from the Temple of Jerusalem). Lastly, the frescoes in the Hall of Constatine depict the Church's victory of Paganism aided by Constantine in his battle victories.

We quickly headed towards the Sistine Chapel, and picked up a useful guidebook of the Vatican Museum along the way that contained maps and descriptions of nearly all the paintings and sculptures. We raced through the Gallery of Contemporary art, not even bothering to admire the paintings hanging on the walls. Finally, we arrived at the Sistine chapel, and there were loads of people. The fact that chapels were a place of silence did not hold true in this case, and some people even dared taking pictures of the frescoes using their flash! Quite a risky action considering the fact that the Michelangelo frescoes depicted the book of the Revelations, the Lives of Christ and Moses and the creation of Adam and Eve. Fortunately, the frescoes had recently been lovingly restored with a greater emphasis on colour, giving the frescoes a life of its own. Whether Michelangelo originally intended this we will never know, since the frescoes suffered damage from dirt, pollution and other natural elements. Still one has to admire how Michelangelo and his assistants managed to lie down to do the frescoes on the ceilings or even stand to do the Last Judgement and parts of the old and new testaments on the chapel walls.

Next on the list was the Vatican library. Other than the many manuscripts and treasures that lined the halls, the Salone Sistino, or hall of Sixtus V, is perhaps the best highlight of the library. The walls and ceilings are again painstakingly decorated with frescoes along the walls and ceilings of the hall. Like with the rest of the museum, there is just too much to describe, but in short, the frescoes in the Lunettes document the accomplishments of Pope Sixtus V, while the rest depict Councils of the Church.

Finally we ended the tour of the museum by going through the Vatican art gallery of the Pinacoteca, the statues of Roman Emperors in the Braccio Nuovo, and the Etruscan Museum. By the time we descended down the spiral staircase towards the exit, it was approaching late morning. We decided to head straight for St Peters.

Arriving into St Peters Square and Basilica was quite overwhelming. Designed by Bernini, the square is concave with an Egyptian Obelisk in the centre and two fountains at the side, bordered by a collonade. In addition, there was a christmas display in the centre, containing Jesus Christ in a manger with the Virgin Mary and Joseph. Looks like christmas is still not over...

Behind St Peters square is the Basilica itself and its elaborate facade and atrium. Designed by Carlo Maderno, the facade's most strikiing features are obviously the clocktowers on each side and the statues mounted at the top. Through the facade and into the Atrium, I could not help noticing the painstaking detail and care of the painted carvings on the ceiling, also designed by Maderno.

When we entered the Basilica, the first thing we noticed were the throngs of tourists around the Pieta by Michelangelo. Shielded behind a plate of glass, the sculpture depicts Mary clutching the body of Jesus Christ in her arms. As the tourists busily snapped away at their cameras, I was beginning to think that the glass was placed merely to detract those from taking pictures, since any flash reflects off the glass and potentially wrecking the picture, in addition to protecting the sculpture.

We walked onwards past the Chapel of St Sebastian containing the tomb of Innocent XI and a monument of Gregory XIII before arriving at the Chapel of the Sacrement. This, however was hidden behind curtains since it was a place of silence and prayer, but we walked in, knelt and prayed with the others. As well as spending some time to reflect on my life, this was the best opportunity to get some rest for my tired feet!

Afterwards, we walked towards the centre of the Basilica, past the group of tourists around the statue of St Peter, towards the Baldacchino housing the Papal Altar and the Nave (the "Confession") can be found. Pausing a moment to look around, I found it hard to adjust to the sheer size of the Baldacchino housing the the altar. Even the gigantic statues of Saints Longinus, Helen, Veronica and Andrew seemed to be dwarfed by the looming structure of the altar, designed by Bernini.

To finish our long tour of the Basilica, we decided to journey up to the Cupola or dome of St Peters. The lift is on the right of the building and there were signs leading to the ticket office. After going through the ticket office and the usual security checks, we ascended up the elevator to the top of St Peters. After this, we climbed up the stairs to the top of the Cupola. The stair climb was claustrophobic, only one person at a time could fit through the narrow staircase and some steps were uncomfortably high. At the final climb towards the top, the steps got taller but there was a rope that aided us up the steep stairs.

After an agonising climb of about five minutes, we finally joined the crowds of tourists already at the top. The views here were spectacular. Not only could you see the Vatican city and museums, but most of Rome and the Tiber River. Looking eastwards, I could just make out the "Wedding Cake" structure of the Victor Emmanuel Monument where the Colliseum is located. However, it was pretty difficult to negotiate our way around the narrow path due to the number of visitors who seemed to have camped themselves on the railings. When we finished walking round the viewing platform, we decided to head back down the exit stairs for lunch.

After finishing our lunch at a nearby cafe in St Peters, we proceeded down Via Di Conciliazione, towards Castel Sant'Angelo, previously the Mausoleum of Hadrian before it was converted into a main fortress used to protect the Pope against attacks from barbarians. However, when we got to the ticket office, we had a bit of an argument about having the correct change to get in. Looks like everywhere around Rome does not have enough currency, especially Euro coins distributed. In the end, we insisted that the cashier should just keep the change and let us proceed. Looks like Euro coins are a rare commodity in Rome.

From the ticket office, we proceeded around the keep, then down the stairs to the spiral ramp. This leads back up towards the top of the castle. In recent times, the castle has been converted into a museum, its numerous halls and rooms displaying statues, sculptures and pottery as well as sketches done by the famous Renaissance artists such as Raphael. However, many of the rooms and halls, including the hall of Sala Paolina and Apollo, the library and a private chapel for the pope, have been left as they are. Not only are these of historic significance, but the halls of Apollo and Sala Paolina are nicely decorated with frescoes from the 16th Century.

We arrived at the top of the castle about sunset to take in the view of Rome and St Peters. Unlike the top of St Peters, the view of Rome was not that good, but there was an excellent and uncluttered view of St Peters. However, the sun was setting quickly so we made our way through the exits, out of the castle and back to the centre of Rome to have dinner.

To sum up, another exhausting day, perhaps contributed by the number of sights to see and absorb. There is so much to see in the Vatican, and while writing this, realised later that we had missed a few places, including the grottoes beneath St Peters and the Vatican Gardens. Maybe next time.