Journey Across Italy-Day 5
Day 5- Friday December 23
Vatican Day! Tour of the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. We did a skip the line, guided tour with City Wonders and would highly recommend. Visiting the Basilica is free but you have to wait in a VERY long line and it don’t include the the chapel or other beautiful artifacts in the Museum. Our tour guide was Georgia, an 8th generation roman and art historian. She was of course knowledgeable but also warm and friendly. Photos are not allowed in the Sistine Chapel so we don’t have any but please take my word that it was magnificent and we were able to spend about 20 minutes enjoying Michelangelo’s work (along with other tour groups, it wasn’t private.) We worried our girls would be a little bored but they were surprisingly interested in everything and we even got a compliment from Georgia on their good behavior. After lunch Andrew and Barbra went to another Basilica, Santa Maria Maggiore.
Tour company: City Wonders. We did the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's Basilica Small Group Tour.
Sights seen: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, Santa Maria Maggiore.
In the upper left you can see the chimney where smoke arrises to announce a new pope.
Interior courtyard, Cortile della Pigna.
The Cortile della Pigna (opposite view) is so called by this bronze pine cone almost 4 meters high which in classical times was located in Rome near the Pantheon, from which the “Pigna district” took its name; in the Middle Ages it was probably brought to the ancient St. Peter’s Basilica, from where it was moved here in 1608. On the sides are two bronze peacocks, copies of originals from the 2nd century AD, preserved in the Braccio Nuovo.
Inside the Vatican Museums.
The Belvedere Torso
Nero’s bathtub, more technically known as a porphyry basin. Made from an extremely rare marble called ‘imperial porphyry,’ Nero and other emperors liked this stone because of its deep and distinctive purple shade, but it was also extremely hard to come by.
Gorgeous floor mosaics throughout but this one was my favorite.
The map room.
After the museums and Sistine Chapel they brought us around to the front of St. Peters.
View of the Square from the entrance o the Basilica.
First thing you see upon entering the Basilica.
The Madonna della Pietà, informally known as La Pietá, by Michelangelo.
Tomb of Pope (now Saint) John Paul II.
Christmas Nativity
Baptismal Font
View right down the center.
Back out front
We stopped for some cookies at one of the specialty shops by our Airbnb.
Santa Maria Maggiore
Night view from the balcony of Airbnb. You can see the light of St. Peter’s.