confusion

Still trying to get done before I leave of this year’s holiday. Only a few days left. I have our day trip to Pompeii, a couple days in Milan and today’s entry, Vatican City [wikipedia.org], to go. Tick tock.

Technically the Vatican City is another country, but really it’s part of Rome [confusion.cc]. It deserves it’s own entry however, not just because it is a separate country but because between Saint Peter’s Basilica [wikipedia.org] and the Vatican Museums [wikipedia.org] (and other things we didn’t visit) it is it’s own thing.

Saint Peter’s Square, and the Basilica, dominate the public view of the Vatican City. While the entrance to the Vatican Museums is a good walk around the outside of the city, everyone starts with Saint Peter’s square.

The church itself is massive, so massive you can’t even tell how big it is. all you can see from the square is the façade and the dome. It’s hard to tell how big it is. The total area of the church is 21,095 m² (227,070 square feet) according to Wikipedia, and 136.6 m or 448.1 feet to the top of the cross on the dome. It’s over 500 steps to the top of the dome (unfortunately, or fortunately if you are my knees, both times we wanted to go to the top the line was hours long so we decided to skip it. It’s funny, I’ve been to Vatican City three times and all three times I have failed to go to the top of the dome due to the wait. C’est la vie.

The inside of the church is also amazing, even having seen so many cathedrals across Europe. It’s overwhelmingly golden and while there are lights positioned to make sure you can see the ceiling and domes, filled with sculptures and paintings, if it’s sunny the interior is bathed in amazing crepuscular rays. There is also a lot of art, two I want to mention:

Pietà [wikipedia.org] by Michelangelo [wikipedia.org], which, along with David [wikipedia.org] is his best work. And St. Peter’s Baldachin [wikipedia.org] which is that four posted thing over the place the pope sits or stands when they are in the Basilica. It’s hard to get a good look at Pietà because it’s behind bullet proof glass. A deranged man tried to destroy it by hacking at it with a hammer back in 1972. It’s still beautiful but there are too many reflections.

The Baldachin is so massive, in photos it does not look that massive (maybe because Michelangelo’s design for the church includes extensive use of perspective, with statues and decorations on the upper levels increased in size which fools you eyes, makes it hard to truly appreciate the size, until you see the people dwarfed by everything, and especially the pope standing under the Baldachin, what you thought was maybe like a normal ceiling is actually 28.74 m tall (94.3 ft)!

Besides Saint Peter’s, the other must see in the Vatican is the Vatican Museums. One of the most extensive collections of classical, medieval, renaissance and even modern art in the world. Second only the Louvre in number of annual visitors in one recent list I saw.

There are seemingly endless halls of statues —Egyptian, Classical Greek and Roman, renaissance and more. The Egyptian collection also includes other traditional plundered things: mummies, stele, various things from tombs. Then there are halls and halls of medieval paintings and renaissance painting. And the buildings themselves are works of art. It can all be a little overwhelming, similar to the Louvre or Uffizi, it’s best to spend a few days if you can. But there are a few things worth mentioning:

• The Transfiguration [wikipedia.org] by Raphael, is a standout painting in the collection.
• I love The River Nile (no Wikipedia page) an larger than life sculpture of the personification of the river with various cherub like putti and animals (like crocodiles) crawling over and around the river.
• The School of Athens [wikipedia.org], another work by Raphael, this time a fresco. You know this picture, everyone does, showing Plato and Aristotle walking through a ‘school’ of philosophers, engineers and others.
• The Gallery of Maps, by far my favorite part of the Vatican Museums, is a long hallway of large painted maps of Italy from the late 1500’s. But the vaulted ceiling, covered in intricate painting (frescoes?) in what Wikipedia tells me is the in the Mannerism style, but really looks Baroque to me. The way it’s lit (modern florescent lights but still,) how the vault color contrasts with the natural lights on the walls is amazing.
• The Sistine Chapel [wikipedia.org]. The big one. The one everyone is making their way towards. You can’t take photos and you can only stay a few minutes as they constantly urge you to keep moving, but it is as amazing as everything you’ve heard. I can’t imagine the years Michelangelo spent on his back doing the frescoes. I don’t think his Last Judgment fresco on the wall is nearly as good as the ceiling. To see the Creation of Adam in person is amazing and totally worth it.

Ok. There are numerous other works of art and architecture in the Basilica and the Museums, but I need to get to work cleaning up the Pompeii and Milan photos so that’s it for this entry on Vatican City.

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You can see the full Vatican City, December 2023 [flickr.com] photoset on Flickr.

I don’t know if I’m going to make it through all the photos from our trip to Italy in 2023 before we go on holiday this year. It’s the last few days of November 2024 now. We were already in Italy by this time last year, in Venice [confusion.cc] and then Florence [confusion.cc]… After this post on Rome, I will still need at lest two more posts. And we leave for our holiday in a week. Let’s see.

But back to last year. Rome [wikipedia.org]. The Eternal City. Blah blah blah. Rome. It’s a big, busy city. Noisy, crowded, even in December the key sights are constantly abuzz with tourists. After staying downtown in Florence we stayed a little outside of main tourist sites in Rome. It’s wasn’t far, but it meant we had to hike a bit and take public transport but that made the contrast between the medieval core of Florence and the more modern, living, city of Rome more obvious. Florence is a city that feels focused on the Renaissance. Rome, is focused on today, even as the monuments to more than 2000 years of history hide down every via, around every corner in some new piazza.

The glory that was Rome left Rome many must see sites; the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Forum… And Holy Mother Church has added many more. The Vatican City deserves it’s own post, so I’ll leave St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums for then.

We did visit the Pantheon [wikipedia.org], a marvel of construction from two millennia ago. Light streaming through the oculus in the great dome. It’s amazing. The enormity of the open space, especially given it’s age lives up to it’s reputation. It’s an impressive building even today, and architectural marvel when it was built and for most of its history. Many a gothic cathedral’s feeling of size is outdone by this Roman masterpiece.

Oh, and Raphael is entombed there. Adding that to our two Ninja Turtle namesake tombs in Florence, we saw three on this trip, for those keeping count. Unfortunately the forth Ninja Turtle namesake is not buried in Italy, so we had no way to complete the set. Should have planned ahead in 2022…

Moving on. We braved the lines at the Colosseum [wikipedia.org] and the gray skies. I’m always a little disappointed with the Colosseum. The inside is ruins. Between the devastation of time and nature, and the plundering by humans of the past 1500 plus years, a lot has been lost. It’s hard to get the sense of grandeur. I know it’s huge, I know what it was, but being inside it never lives up to it. The exterior is amazing, though every time I’ve been there the crowds and construction have contrived to prevent me from taking a picture I’m truly happy with. Still, it’s The Colosseum, and it is worth the visit, but I recommend also going to see a more intact roman amphitheater —like the one in Verona.

We spent the rest of the afternoon after finishing the Colosseum in The Forum [wikipedia.org]. The Forum is an amazing space, packed full of history. If you are not into the history it underwhelming, a bunch of ruins. A few columns here, a triumphal arch over there, some statues, and more ruins. You have to be a student of history, to understand the momentous events of western history that took place in these ruins to truly make walking around the Forum worth it, else it’s just a bunch of old rocks. But… Caesar was here. Cicero was here. Sulla. Augustus. The Gracchi. And so many more people who’s names are known and ring out loudly through history. I really enjoy going to places that were important to history, where things happened. And there are few places as important to western history, and to world history as the heart of ancient Rome, Republic and Empire.

Of course we didn’t just see Roman ruins. We wondered around the city, had tea by the Spanish Steps [wikipedia.org], visited the Trevi Fountain [wikipedia.org] several times (it was on the walk from our hotel to most everything) walked around Christmas markets in Piazza Navona, strolled along the Tiber and admired the angels on Ponte Sant’Angelo [wikipedia.org], though we didn’t visit Castel Sant’Angelo [wikipedia.org], just walked past it a few times. We also found a little outdoor market in Piazza Borghese that was filled with stalls selling pages from old books, stamps and old travel posters. It was a lot of fun to flip through biology books from a century ago, page after page of detailed drawings of bugs or mushrooms or fish. I would love to decorate with framed pages from those books, but they were not cheap and hard to transport, and my house is already full. C’est la vie.

One last thing we did. Similar to how we stumbled upon the Anish Kupoor exhibit in Florence. We saw posters for an exhibit of M. C. Escher’s art [mcescher.com] at the Palazzo Bonaparte. According to the website it is the most comprehensive exhibit ever. It was very cool, to see in person all the famous drawings and prints of M. C. Escher: Hand with Reflecting Sphere (Self Portrait in Spherical Mirror) [mcescher.com], Drawing Hands [mcescher.com], Reptiles [mcesher.com], Sky and Water I [mcescher.com], Möbius Strip II (Red Ants) [mcescher.com], Bond of Union [mcescher.com], Waterfall [mcescher.com], and so many more. So many I’ve seen in books, on posters in college dorm rooms, on tee shirts. Very cool to see in person. It was also, as with Kupoor in Florence, a great way to break-up the monotony of Roman ruins and renaissance art.

That’s about it for Rome, other than the Vatican City, which I’ll try to cover next.

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You can view the full Rome, Italy, December 2023 photoset on Flickr.

From our base in Florence we ventured out to two additional cities in Tuscany: Pisa, and Siena. You could call this part of our trip, coming in the middle as it does, the Two Towers.

First, Pisa [wikipedia.org]. Of course there was one goal in Pisa, the Leaning Tower [wikipedia.org]. We took the train from Florence and walked to the Piazza del Duomo. The tower is fun to see and to hike up to the top. The slanted stairs make you feel like a drunk as you circle the tower, first leaning to the inside then to the outside of the corridor. After enjoying the view from the top for a while we went into the cathedral.

As I said, the Tower was the only attraction we went to Pisa for. So, after visiting the Tower and Duomo we had an early dinner. Then we took a slow walk back the train station and headed back to Florence.

A few days later we took the train to Siena [wikipedia.org]. As Siena is at the top of steep hill from the train station we took a bus to the old city. Other than just exploring the well preserved midieval city we wanted to climb the Torre del Mangia [wikipedia.org]. To be honest my knees were not looking forward to the 400 or so steps to the top. But, I wanted the photos from the top. Unfortunately, or fortunately if you are my knees, the tower was closed due to high wind.

We didn’t really notice how strong the wind was in the Piazza del Campo where the tower is located, it was a bit windy. But as we made our way to the Siena Cathedral [wikipedia.org], it was obvious why they closed the tower. In the piazza around the Duomo it was almost like a cartoon, leaning into the wind to avoid being blown over; the slight drizzle was turned into horizontal darts of water.

The Duomo in Siena is, I think, one of the more beautiful interiors in Tuscany. It’s just the right blend of the gothic and romanesque styles. It has that multi-colored marble stripes on the columns, and the gothic vaulted ceiling. I love it’s completely not circular dome. But the most interesting part, historically if not visually, is the uncompleted expansion you can see half built in the piazza, the attempted size is stunning. The nave of the current building was going to be the transept of the new one. The plague put an end to that building work, and it was discovered that it had some flaws in it anyway and most probably would have fallen down, so they never finished it even after the plague was over.

Anyway, we wondered around Siena a bit more, saw the home of the oldest surviving bank in the world, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which isn’t much of a tourist site but we did have to walk by it anyway as we wondered around trying to find here to get a bus back to the train station.

So, that was our Tuscany excursions. We didn’t go to San Gimignano or Arezzo or just wonder around the country side. Winter is not really the time to wonder around, Tuscany is justifiable famous for the beautiful countryside but that is more suited for a summer visit.

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You can see the whole Pisa, Italy, December 2023 [flickr.com] or Siena, Italy, December 2023 [flickr.com] photosets on Flickr.