Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Rome 2 with Anna
My last day in Rome, and my last day with Anna began with a delicious breakie and a quick trip into town to drop Anna's bag off at her new hostel. We had booked ourselves onto a Vatican tour at 10am and it started at the bridge of angels. There was so much amazing history, I wont go into too much detail as a lot of it wasn't absorbed. There were a few art works that really amazed me. One is done by Michelangelo called the Pieta and is a statue of a young Madonna holding a deceased Jesus. For a few reasons this doesn't make sense. One, she is not young when Jesus died, two she is far too large (8 foot if she stood up) and three the way she is holding him is rather akward. Art historians suggest this is because she is meant to be holding baby Jesus seeing a premonition of what is to come. Interesting from an art perspective.
I don't know what I thought the vatican would be like. But I didn't expect to see as much artwork, sculptures, paintings, tapestries, marble, you name it, they've got it.
It is like a hodge podge of everything they could get their hands on, hiding it away in old rooms and then thinking, oh well, lets let them see it I suppose, but lets pretend we aren't the richest museum anywhere. They have an amazing golden globe which I also saw in Dublin (it is supposed to spin, but the Vatican are too cheap to keep it running). The other statue is one that was known about to artists for many hundreds of years because they believed it to be the most beautiful piece of sculpture work ever created, it was written about in many different places. Only catch was it had disappeared. One day a farmer digging in his fields found it and sold it to the Catholic church for three times his original asking price (plus he got a knighthood that extended to all his descendants, I call that a good crop!). So they dug it up, but it was missing an arm....they couldn't find it anywhere. They had a good many debates about which way it would be facing and everyone disagreed with Michelangelo. They replaced the arm and then 80 years later, found the original in
another field. Guess who was right? Michelangelo.
Our guide Ian said he even knew where he had engraved his initials in the stonework of the Vatican museum...so he was into graffiti too! Some other amazing things were the biggest marble bath in history....it is worth so much now it is pretty much priceless. Tapestries that they eyes are woven to follow you as you walk around it, and amazing maps, hand drawn without any technological help 85% correct to maps today!
Ian then tool us outside to tell us about the sistine chapel. The artwork at the beginning of his plan took several months to finish and you can see the intricate detail that fills us nearly all the space in the area. As the works progress more blocks of colour are found and less detail until the last panal took only a week to complete! He seemed to be entirely sick of working on it. Understandable really considering it took 4 years to complete it. So many tourists disrespected the no talking or taking photos rule, it was an incredible experience to be there and appreciate the hard work and amazing talent it took to complete the entire roof, I cannot immagine an artist considering it today.
Outside we headed for the church which was also very beautiful, we saw the original statue of the 8 foot Madonna now behind bullet proof glass because a mentaly retarded Australian guy went nuts with a hammer once and knocked various pieces off her. Outside the church we admired the Swiss Guards for their chivalry, dedication, skills (amazing eyes, handsome features, funky uniforms...). Anna and I took some funky photos and took a long walk to my favourite gelatissimo (reccommended to me by Tad) and then walked even further to the Colosseum.
Luckily we had timed it perfectly and Jen and her boyfriend were on the first night of a top deck tour through Italy and had one night left in Rome before they left so the three muskateers from Spain were together again! (Plus Jen's mannie, who was an honerary fourth). We had a delicious dinner at Cul de Sac another place reccomended by Tad, the Romeing tour guide, til we all had to back to our own hostels to begin the next adventure. I was off to Florence, Anna had a few days in Rome before going back to France and Jen was off through Italy! Who knows when we will make it back together? I miss them already!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.262s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0856s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb