Day 4 - Rome and the Vatican

Today was massive!

We started the day with our usual breakfast, heading out for a leisurely day at the Vatican. We hadn't realised that, with Palm Sunday yesterday and the preparation for it on Saturday, St Peter's and the Vatican Museums had been closed for two days. Given that the Vatican is said to have 22,000 visitors a day, this meant that 66,000 people were descending on the Vatican at the same time our little group was!

But we didn't know that, so we thought we would take our time with a slow ambling walk along the Tiber, the broad river that flows through Rome. We came to Ponte Sant'Angelo, a wide foot bridge lined with magnificent sculpted angels, two of them by Bernini. The bridge leads to Castel Sant'Angelo, an ancient building that started as a tomb for the family of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, but that by the Middle Ages was a fort that offered the Pope protection during a siege. It was also the setting for the climax of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.

Angels and Demons

Ten Angels

We crossed Ponte Sant'Angelo, had a good look at the Castello and continued our leisurely stroll to the Vatican. We soon started to notice a lot of others were heading the same way as us. We were starting to think that we might be queuing for a while. We organised a skip-the-queue ticket for the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel and braved the queue for the Vatican and St Peter's Basilica. The queue wasn't that long but the Basilica was crowded.

St Peter's Square

It didn't matter.

St Peter's Basilica is an awe inspiring experience. The interior is enormous, huge vaulted ceilings giving way to the famous dome of the Basilica, designed by Michelangelo himself. Every surface is adorned with some image, sculpture or feature designed to celebrate the grandeur of God. The boys were amazed by the majesty of the Basilica, and the sense of the divine that radiated from it.

Incredible art drew the eye everywhere, including a prominent statue of a saint the boys knew well - St John Bosco, founder of the Salesians. As pleasing as it was to see our own saint standing alongside so many better known saints, the highlight came from other quarters.

The tomb of Pope John Paul II is located in a chapel to the side of the Basilica and was the second-most visited part of it. Dozens of people sat in silent prayer before the tomb of the much-loved Pope, with dozens more waiting to take their place.

The highlight, however, was Michelangelo's sculpture Pieta. Carved from a single block of marble, this piece depicts Mary holding the body of her son Jesus. An exquisite example of the art of sculpture, Pieta captures both the divinity and humanity of Mary perfectly.



Following the visit to the Basilica we went to the Vatican Tombs below the Basilica where so many Popes have been buried, with saints making a fair proportion of their number.

Then we went to lunch at a nearby cafe (Pio Er Caffe - um, if you're ever in Rome, avoid it) and then went to the Vatican Museum, confident we had organised our skip-the-queue experience.

Lunch at Pio Er Caffe, near Vatican City

In order to skip the queue to the Vatican Museums we needed to join a queue to receive our skip-the-queue stickers. Having received our skip-the-queue sticker we queued up behind the guide who led us to where we could skip the queue. In one big queue we followed her along the street, passing the queue waiting to enter the Vatican Museum. It was apparently a three to four hour queue and people were patiently sitting there on their phones, sharing pizza or telling the street vendors that no, they didn't need a selfie stick or bouncing frog thing or laser pointer or wooden bowls. Our own skip-the-queue queue snaked past them until we assembled outside the group entry to the museum where we had to form another queue. We were in that queue for about half an hour, all to skip-the-queue. Once our skip-the-queue queue entered the museum we had to queue again while they got us entry passes. In total, we queued for an hour in order to skip the queue. Skip-the-queue? Skip a queue, maybe.

Our frustration at the queue evaporated as soon as we entered the Vatican Museums. Even though we were moving in a tight human crush of people, here were the treasures of the Vatican in one of the most impressive buildings on the planet. Manicured gardens with beautiful sculptures looked on to impressive views of St Peter's. Inside, we passed through an extraordinary collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures accumulated by collector Popes over the years. Art was everywhere. We passed through rooms with massive tapestries, lifelike marbles and vivid frescoes. When we arrived in Raphael's room, housing the School of Athens, we were struck by the genius of some of these artists.

Then we arrived at the Sistine Chapel.

'Breathtaking' is used to describe a lot of things, quite an overused adjective. But that is the best word to describe the Sistine Chapel. The majesty and genius of Michelangelo's work combined with the holiness of the place where we stood did make our breaths catch in our throats. There was so much to take in, so much being said across the centuries that we could have stayed there for hours. The boys were in awe of their surroundings.

We got to the Vatican at 9.30 am and left at 5.00 pm, a long day of shuffling through crowds, but one well worth it. In credit to the boys on this trip, not one complained and all thought it an excellent experience.

We finished the day with a three course Italian meal at the Taverna Del Seminario. Our cases packed for the train journey to Florence the next morning, we all headed to bed.

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