Vatican Day

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11 de Novembre
Sono le nove e mezzo

We are just finishing colazione (breakfast); we are sitting here at the hotel restaurant, drinking not-very-good coffee, waiting for Carrie.

Today is "Vatican Day". We'll start with St. Peter’s Basilica, then go to the Vatican museum, visit the Sistine Chapel, and at 2:30 we have a reservation for an archeological tour of the excavation of the necropolis below St. Peter’s. Our hotel is in the Vaticano area, so it is a very short passeggiata.

St Peter’s Basilica
- ->We just completed a visit to the cupola of St Peter’s Basilica. 320 steps (plus many more to get to the rooftop piazza where the counting started) and all well worth it. Just before the 320 step climb began, we had a fabulous view of the interior of the basilica from a catwalk, then at the top we had magnificent city views. The stairs were very steep and winding, with slanted walls - we are all in agreement that we would not enjoy that walk during the crowds and heat of summer. We are so lucky with the weather - it is an amazingly sunny day, with strikingly blue skies, warm with a slight breeze.

- ->Now I am sitting just outside of the basilica, having just finished our tour of the inside. It is very impressive, so many mosaics and statues and popes laying as if at a viewing. And Michelangelo’s famous Pieta sculpture is beautiful.

- ->We are having lunch now, quick panino fromaggio e una arranciata, sitting beside la via di Porta Angelica. Next up is the Musei Vaticano and the Sistene Chapel.

- ->Whoops! The museum and chapel closed at 12:20 today! We’ll need to fit this in later in the week; can’t miss the Sistene Chapel! So we are now sitting at a streetside café, drinking coffee and wine (not at the same time) and writing in our journals. Next up is our tour of the excavation. St. Peter’s basilica is built upon an ancient “city of the dead.” Two months ago, Leslie arranged through the “Ufficio degli Scavi” for us to do a special tour.

- ->It is now mezzanotte, and we are back in the hotel. What a day!

Beneath the Basilica
At 2:45 we went on our much anticipated Scavio tour beneath St Peter’s Basilica. We were tremendously lucky to have the tour to ourselves. Our tour guide was a seminary student named Jordan Bower. He was a great tour guide and a perfect match for our group. He is two years into his four year course of study to become a priest. He is from
St Paul Minnesota, probably in his mid-twenties. Since it was just the four of us, and it was immediately apparent that Jordan has a sense of humor, we could speak freely. We could ask questions and meander down alternative tangents; we asked enough questions to turn a 1 ¼ hour tour into a two hour religion, history, archeology, and mythology seminar, with a smattering of Latin along the way.

The tour began with a theatrical flourish as our guide, dressed in priestly garb (and black socks with Birkenstocks) led us past the tourists in the Grotto, opened a gate, and led us down a flight of steps that ended at a glass door. Jordan typed a keycode into a numeric pad on the wall, and the door silently slid open. We filed into a tiny room (which reminded me of the first room in the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tour, or perhaps a scene from Alice in Wonderland) that at first appeared to have no exit. Once the outer door had closed, Jordan again punched in a key code on another numeric keypad, which opened a sliding door in a small arch. Ducking through the archway, we were hit by thick warm underground air; walking around the corner we were hit by the immediate desire to take a photo (which was of course forbidden.) We were standing in a cobblestone alleyway along a row of buildings; it was so easy to imagine a blue sky above (instead of the reality; St Peter’s Basilica) This had been a cemetery, mostly for wealthy Romans, who built large mausoleums. One we saw was large enough to, ummm, “seat” 120.

As we worked our way through the archeological site, Jordan artfully unfolded two tales for us, while we peppered him with questions and unabashedly added our own insights.

One tale started in circa 50AD, when St Peter was crucified, during the reign of Nero. Christians were not allowed proper burial, so St Peter’s followers gave him a secret burial in the cemetery on Vatican Hill. In the time of Constantine (300s) when he recognized Christianity, he built a church. He asked the Christians where to build the church, and they chose this site because of St Peter’s burial here. A marble box was built by Constantine around St Peter’s tomb, and the church was built around it. After Constantine's church fell, another church was constructed; the basilica that we see is the third church to sit on this site. During all of this construction, the tomb was buried, but the story was passed along. Without physical proof, the story was accepted on faith.

Interwoven with that story, Jordan unfolded the modern story of archeological discovery. While preparing for the burial of Pope Pius XI in 1939, they dug down three feet and uncovered the top of one of the mausoleums below. This began two decades of archeological digging, research, and mystery. Symbols in Latin engraved on a wall, mosaics of Christian scenes on the walls of one of the mausoleums; a burial that was ostensibly Pagan, but with an inscription asking for St. Peter’s protection . . . missing chunks of rock from walls, missing bones found in closets; clues uncovered that led to the eventual discovery of bones that (as much as scientifically possible) have been verified to be St. Peter’s bones.

Jordan did a great job of slowly unwinding and entwining these tales (obviously with many more details than I have given here), and seemed to truly enjoy our (IMHO) intelligent questions and contributions. And he even laughed at our jokes!

One could be cynical; either saying that these are just bones so what’s the big deal . . . or by saying that noone can really be sure that these are his bones. However, even though none of us are Catholic, all of us were affected (in different ways), by the story and the tour and our guide. It was a great experience. The tour of the Basilica above ground made me think about wealth and opulence, about the extravagance of ruling classes. In contrast, the tour of the Basilica below ground had a palpable energy presence. Upstairs brought to mind history and politics; downstairs brought to heart history and faith.

We completed our tour in the Grotto, with a visit to the tomb of Pope John Paul. We gave a heartfelt thank you and good-bye to Jordan. I asked him to include Jake Allegro in his prayers on Thursday Nov 16th during his surgery.

We then thanked Leslie for finding this tour and arranging it for us. Then we adjourned to a neighborhood trattoria to ramp down from our day.

Present Day Politics
We returned to our hotel at 7pm. All was calm on the streets when we walked into the hotel, but by the time we climbed (yes, more stairs) to the third floor, an American couple asked what was going on outside. Seems they had seen police marching with joined arms as if blocking a crowd. So we went to the windows of our room. First we could see only the police, but then the demonstrators came into view, with banners and waving two flavors of flags: the Italian flag and another unfamiliar flag; red with a black symbol that was a plus-sign with a circle around it. The flag had an eerie similarity to another similarly colored flag. Other banners read Forza Nuova (FN). When Linda and I got downstairs to meet Carrie and Leslie, Leslie told us that she had asked at the front desk and was told that the marching group are indeed fascists.

A Sicilian Dinner
At that point, Leslie and Carrie said that they did not want to go out; they were tired and ready for bed. So Linda and I went out, just the two of us night owls. We walked to the Castel Sant’Angelo (a fortress built in 123AD), then walked across the Ponte Sant’Angelo over Fiume Tevare (the Tiber River.) We wandered a bit off the beaten path, and it took only a short walk to pass a number of restaurants and we chose Capricci Siciliani. We shared a Sicilian antipasti sampler that was fabulous and then I had Caponata as an entrée. We sat outside and the restaurant was set in a picturesque cobblestone alleyway. We ordered coffee instead of cappuchino; and got a thimbleful of amazingly strong expresso that ate up a full packet of sugar without any diminishment of bitterness. Everything was wonderful, even the coffee was an adventure.

Roma Wins!
We walked back over the next bridge south (Ponte Vittorio Emanuele) for a wonderful view. En route to the hotel, we stopped at a bar on our block called Antropometrico, and wondered why it said:
Milano
Roma
on a small blackboard out front. We got our answer (loudly) when, while looking for a seat, we inadvertently stood in front of the large screen television showing the Milan-Rome soccer game! We were in time to watch the last fifteen minutes of the game; saw Totti score the game winning goal, saw another goal by Milano cancelled for a penalty, and joined in the 10 second countdown (in Italian of course) as Roma won 2-1! During the game, we met Franco, an older gentleman who shook his head saying “Americanos” when we said we didn’t speak much Italian . . . counting off the words he assumed we knew “Spaghetti, pizza, football, ciao, vino . . .” then he taught us in his very broken English, that ROMA spelled backwards is of course AMOR. As he left he visited our table again, making a coin disappear and pulling it out of my ear.

Then, back to the hotel to get some sleep! What a day!

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Photos

Vatican
Leslie in front of St. Peter's Basilica.

View from the top
This is one of the views from the top of the cuppola.

Inside of the dome
This is the view from within the cuppola.

The Swiss Guard
One of the many young, splendidly garbed guards.

Capricci Siciliani
Linda and Tammie's favorite dinner.

Castel Sant'Angelo
The view of the fortress and the pedstrian bridge, reflected in the Tiber River.