The Vatican Museums - Rome, Italy

The Vatican Museums are a massive collection of statues, paintings and ancient artifacts held by the Roman Catholic Church. The museum begins with a series of sculpture exhibits, starting with Egyptian period, then Assyrian/ Babylonian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman sculptures. Then you pass through a series of long hallways containing tapestries, halls of maps and paintings and you get to Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel. After the Sistine Chapel there are exhibits of more modern art before the trip ends.

All in all the Vatican Museum is an amazing but grueling experience. It starts off with what can be a massive line, but if you book online you can skip this process. It’s fairly expensive (~26 Euro/person), but what are you going to do, skip it? It would be like skipping the Taj Mahal when you were in Agra. So, regretfully pay the fee, and know that your money is mostly going to the museum, and not for popemobiles ;P

After getting through the line and entering the building, you must purchase your ticket. These are picked towards the left. If you have booked online, you will get the benefit of going to the group line (labeled something like Cassi Gruppi E Interneti). Booking online incurs a fee of a few Euros, but it will save you 30 min to an hour, unless you get there extremely early. My first trip to Rome, ~15 years ago, we did this and were able to get into the museum very quickly. We were the first people in the Sistine Chapel, even before the guards. My father took a ton of photos, strictly verboten by the Vatikaner Karabinieri.

The first exhibit you will see are from ancient Egypt as well as some Roman artwork done in the same style. From my immense wisdom imparted to me via the HBO series Rome, it is my understanding that Rome played second fiddle to the more cultured Egypt, at least until after the reign of Cleopatra. For this reason the Romans sometimes emulated the Egyptians.

Here's a notice for a head-mounted dildos sale:

It looks like there was some extra padding to this guy's hips:

According to the exhibit, Egyptians embalmed their dead because they were deeply religious, and believed they would go to the afterlife with their preserved body.

Unfortunately their sandals had a much better preservation technique than their bodies:

Here are some Roman Faux-Egyptian Kitsch:

Clenching her fists in anger over those banana boobies:

Anubis, morphed Hermes, called the Hermanubis (much like Bradgelina):

They did this stuff a lot with the god Hermes, e.g. Hermaphrodite (Hermes + Aphrodite).
A baboon:

This is a statue of Dis, a farming god that had evolved into an evil god of Hades by the time of Julius Caesar.

Some more agricultural style deities:

Mao Tzetung:

This one is the most interesting to me, since I know so little about Babylonians/ Assyrians / Persians, etc. who used cuneiform:

From the Egyptian rooms you go onto the more Roman and Greco style "Salas." They have all sorts of really Greco-Roman Sculpture:

This strange guy had mushrooms on his head:

Of course there is the standard victory piece:

Some Chinese influence?

And a whole room full of animal statues:

And the museum of endangered children, Sala 3: victimi cum esponges:

After the sculptures, you have a series of neverending hallways. The first is with tapestries, but at this point it's very difficult to care.

There are so many people, that as you walk into the hall of maps, you start thinking about screaming fuego...

...But somehow I made it through the hallways. Prior to the Sistine Chapel are a series of rooms painted mostly by the students of the master Raphael.

Raphael painted a great mural of Constantine's victory over paganism:

Supposedly Constantine, saw some symbols in the sky:

This one was really painted by Raphael, not just his students:

Here's what was the oculus:

Some beams from the palatial rooms:

Eventually you get to the "modern" art part, but because my wife and I were so hungry it was difficult to care...

Finally you get to the Vatican Museum's pizzeria. It is affordable, and it is convenient, so it should be unlikely that the holy inquisitor of digestion's office should be also capable of making something tasty.

The pizza was affordable, but it really sent me on a downward spiral.

Here's a statue left over from the German pope:

The vatican museum is long and grueling trip. It's a must-see, but I wouldn't do it again unless I was really early and there was a guarantee of very few people.

Sauce

Sauce Magnusson

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