This morning we were slow to get going. We were out the door at 1000. We decided to walk to the train station, about 2 miles northeast. It was a beautiful, sunny, crisp, cool autumn day, and we wanted to check out the suburb we were in. The neighborhood we are in is endless rows of brick apartment complexes, most of them 5 stories tall. Most of the streets are lined with trees and graffiti. The leaves on the trees are starting to die. We found a pasticcheria (sweets bakery) along the way and stopped for a snack. We caught the train into the heart of Rome, approximately 23 kilometers away. From there we had to catch two more connecting subways to the Vatican. This is what trains look like in Rome. Actually, graffiti is a big problem in Italy. It is everywhere.

Vatican City is the smallest sovereign country in the world, less than 1 square kilometer in size. The Pope also has sovereignty over three more churches in Rome that are outside the Vatican borders. Vatican City has its own postal service, newspaper, radio station, army, and is even allowed to mint Euro coins. They have an alliance with Italy regarding most things that countries have to deal with. For example, if a crime is committed within Vatican City, the Vatican will prosecute in the Italian court system.

The first Pope lived in Vatican City from 498 514, but it wasn’t until 1377 that the Vatican became the Pope’s official residence. Since 1377, 265 popes have resided there. The walls around the Vatican were erected in 846 AD after a series of raids. The Vatican Palace was first constructed in the 12th century, and subsequent popes have extended it, fortified it and decorated it as they saw fit. In 1506, the Vatican’s army of Swiss Guards was established to defend the Papal States from invading armies. The Vatican still uses the Swiss guards to protect the pope. The guards are recruited from the best of the best of the Swiss Army. We’re not sure why they only allow the Swiss to protect them. The guards still wear brightly colored medieval costumes and brandish 15th century pikes as their weapons.

We got off the subway and walked a couple blocks over to the Vatican walls. The walls are similar to the other fortress walls we have seen, except with small bricks instead of big stone blocks. We came to the entrance of the Vatican Museums, which are housed in the 5.5 hectare Vatican Palace. Lonely Planet said you could easily spend all day there and not really see it all, so we decided lunch was in order and stopped to eat at the restaurant across the street. Here is the entrance, set into the walls.

At a little after 1300, we were finally ready to go inside. While we ate lunch, we had seen how dozens of people flow through the door every minute and, despite so many people, the line never backed up. We went inside, through an airport style security check, through a gift shop and up a flight of stairs to where you buy tickets. Sadly, there are only regular security guards there. We were hoping to see the cool Swiss Guards. Up one more flight of stairs to “the ground floor”, where the museums begin. At first we wandered around the grounds, confused about where to go. Everyone was flowing into a building with a sign that said “Sistine Chapel”. According to Lonely Planet, the Sistine Chapel was the end of the line and once you went in there, you couldn’t see anything else in the museums. We finally figured out that the “Sistine Chapel” signs really meant “This way”. Once we got that figured out, we joined the hordes.

So, it turns out that it is a one way walking tour. The Vatican has connected a bunch of buildings to make them into one giant building for the tour. The standard tour takes you through several small rooms and one enormous room of sculptures, mostly human likenesses, a large room of animal sculptures, two large rooms of tapestries, a couple rooms of paintings from the renaissance and baroque eras, a giant room that had maps painted on the walls showing the world as they knew it then (we aren’t sure exactly when “then” was, but judging from borders and inaccuracies, it looks to be at least a couple hundred years old), then through at least a dozen rooms with amazing wall and ceiling frescos (paintings) along the lines of what we knew we would be seeing in the Sistine chapel, and finally 55 small rooms of modern religious art before coming to the Sistine Chapel. We think we may have forgotten some rooms along the way, too. Even the “plain” rooms with tapestries and sculptures generally had intricate ceilings and floors. The amount of things to look at was totally overwhelming. It is seriously impossible to take it all in. Even after a dozen visits, you still wouldn’t be able to take it all in. Following are some pictures from the standard tour.

Here is an ancient bronze statue, which is extremely rare. We can’t remember if it is Greek or Roman. It is enormous.

Here we are in front of a tapestry. Since you can’t even see half the tapestry, you get a sense of how huge it is.

And a ceiling that is carved and painted. Not all of them are this intricate, but many are. This is one of the ones that have actual sculptures that look like dead bodies up there.

To be continued”¦