Vatican City Private Tour
My first full day in Rome was spent exploring Vatican City with a private guide. Amazing tour, very special time. There is so much to see and take in, having an informed tour guide makes it easier to take in all this exceptional location has to offer.
Okay, let’s get started. This is the Sistine Chapel from the outside (it's impossible to imagine the beauty within looking at it from this vantage point), The Vatican Gardens and the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.
Walking through many important and beautiful sculptures. This sculpture counts as one of the finest examples of ancient Greek art. It portrays Laocoön and his sons being killed by sea-serpents, which were sent by Athena and Poseidon in order to favour the defeat of Troy and the ensuing foundation of Rome. Probably dating back to around 30-40 BC.
‘Belvedere Torso’
This fragment of a statue may remain unnoticed during a visit to the Vatican Museums, but Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo were particularly fond of it. What inspired these 16th- and 17th-century artists most was the twisted, convoluted quality of the statue. Therefore, ‘Belvedere Torso’ illustrates how the ancient world shaped pre-modern art and sculpture in surprising ways, and it highlights the latter’s indebtedness to the former. The marble sculpture itself dates back to the 1st century BC and is thought to be a copy of a previous original.
These ceramic tiles are naturally colored, don't fade, and create stunning works of art on the floor.
Heracles
This gilded bronze statue was found in 1864 beneath the courtyard of the Palazzo Pio Righetti, near Campo de' Fiori, and in the area of Pompey's Theatre. Shortly afterwards it was given to Pope Pius IX (1846-1878). At the moment of discovery the statue was lying horizontally in a trench and covered by a slab of travertine on which the letters F C S (Fulgur Conditum Summanium) had been cut. The statue had, therefore, been struck by lightning and, following the Roman custom, had been granted a ritual burial together with the remains of a lamb. The statue was restored by Pietro Tenerani who made repairs using plaster and bronze. It shows a young Heracles leaning on his club, with the skin of the Nemean lion over his arm, and the apples of the Hesperides in his left hand. The work was, perhaps, inspired by a model from the Attic School of between 390 and 370 B.C. and has been variously dated to between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 3rd century A.D.
Gallery of Tapestries: Flemish tapestries, realized in Brussels by Pieter van Aelst’s School from drawings by Raphael’s pupils, during the pontificate of Clement VII (1523-1534), hang on the walls. This tapestry, the closest one, is the largest in the room and took 14 years to make.
The Gallery of the Geographical Maps was a papal tour de force for its size, scope, speed and style. At 120 meters it is longer than a football field, yet the magnificent frescoes articulate the space with an elegant rhythm. The hall itself was designed by Ottaviano Mascherino for Pope Gregory XIII who wanted to link his new astronomical observatory, “The Tower of the Winds,” with the apostolic palace, so his guests would walk amidst terrestrial maps before climbing to observe the heavens.
These Vatican maps focused solely on Italy, divided into 40 political regions stretching down the hall. At 15 by 16 feet in size, they provide a Cinemascope-like panorama of each territory while also highlighting enchanting details. The gallery was executed in record time, taking only two years, 1580-1582, to paint the maps and craft the exuberant vault decoration.
The Room of Heliodorus was originally used for the private audiences of the Pope and was decorated by Raphael. In this room you will find The Liberation of St Peter shows the prince of the apostles and first Pope, miraculously saved from prison by an angel while the guards lie sleeping (Acts of the Apostles 12: 5-12). The scene is a reference to Julius II (pontiff from 1503 to 1513), who before being elected Pope was the titular cardinal of St Peter in Chains. In the celebration of light Raphael confronts the divine light of the angel with that of the dawn, of the moon, of the torches and of their reflections on the armour, and even of the natural light that enters from the window below, creating the most extraordinary effects.
The Expulsion of Heliodorus, from whom the room takes its name, illustrates the biblical episode (2 Maccabees, 3: 21-28) of Heliodorus, sent by the king of Syria Seleucus, to take over the treasure preserved in the temple of Jerusalem. At the request of the high priest Onias, God sends a horseman assisted by two youths who beatt and banish Heliodorus. The commissioning pontiff has himself shown as witnessing the scene (in the foreground on the left) seated in the gestatorial chair, carried on the shoulders of the chair bearers. Of these, that on the left is a portrait of Marcantonio Raimondi, engraver and friend of Raphael, who is himself portrayed in the other figure to the right.
The Room of the Segnatura contains Raphael's most famous frescoes. Besides being the first work executed by the great artist in the Vatican they mark the beginning of the high Renaissance.
Raphael’s ‘The School of Athens’
This mesmerizing fresco of Raphael’s is located in the Room of the Segnatura in the Vatican Museums. Dating back to 1509, it depicts a series of renowned philosophers and, in general, well-known personalities of ancient Greece against the backdrop of a Renaissance building. At the centre of the scene are Plato and Aristotle, who are discernible not least because of their hands. While the former points upwards, suggesting that the world perceived through the senses is not reality but just a reflection of something above us, the latter supports the opposite view, namely that we have to stick to this world in order to find what is real.
AND NOW…Drum roll please...The Sistine Chapel in all it's glory. This is the view when you first walk in.
In 1503, a new pope, Julius II, decided to change some of the Sistine Chapel's decorations. He commanded artist Michelangelo to repair and decorate the vault of the Sistine Chapel. At the time, the vault (or ceiling) was simply decorated with a deep ultramarine blue sky, sprinkled with gold leafed stars, as was common for the day.
By 1504 however, a series of worrying cracks appeared in the Sistine Chapel ceiling caused by the subsidence of the underlying soil. This was to become his first painting, and he resisted the order. He thought himself a sculptor and had no desire to be a painter. The power of the Pope left him no choice. Michelangelo the great sculptor was about to become a great painter! The ceiling took from 1508 until it was finished in 1512. He worked solidly for four years standing on purpose built platforms with his neck stretched backwards doing permanent damage to himself physically. It was so taxing that it also permanently damaged his eyesight.
More than 20 years later, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint the giant fresco "The Last Judgment" behind the altar. You can see it at the end with the blue background. The artist, then in his 60s, painted it from 1536 to 1541.
Michelangelo’s design is spectacular. The main panels running down the centre of the Sistine Chapel ceiling portray the nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, the Old Testament, including the famous scene of the Creation of Adam (1511) located near the middle. Man touching the hand of God. Above that panel is the creation of Woman. And above that, is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
St. Peter’s Square
Roman Emperor Caligula built a small circus in his mother’s gardens at the base of Vatican Hill where charioteers trained and where Nero is thought to have martyred the Christians. To crown the center of the amphitheater, Caligula had his forces transport from Egypt a pylon that had originally stood in Heliopolis. The obelisk, made of a single piece of red granite weighing more than 350 tons, was erected for an Egyptian pharaoh more than 3,000 years ago. In 1586 it was moved to its present location in St. Peter’s Square, where it does double duty as a giant sundial.
