Despite the rainy day, we hopped on the city bus toward Vatican City. Dan is Catholic and was very excited for the visit (he even wore a tie :-)) Ryan thought it was great that we were officially crossing into a different country, and had great fun hopping back and forth over the 'border' between Italy and Vatican City.
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| View of St. Peter's Basilica in the late afternoon |
We had pre-purchased tickets to the Vatican Museum for scheduled entry at 2 pm, and there was a long security line to get into St. Peter's Basilica, which meant we didn't have as much time to linger there as we would have liked.
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| Ryan in front of the Bernini statues |
It goes without saying that the church is beautiful and an amazing celebration of Catholicism. It is hard to believe that a church that is almost 400 years old is considered pretty modern in a city who's history spans thousands of years! Of course, people have been praying at that location where St. Peter is buried long before the church was ever built.
We did our best to engage the kids in observing and appreciating various pieces of art and sculpture. I still can't believe that Michelangelo carved the Pieta when he was only 24 years old, and it was the first sculpture he ever carved! We had hoped to climb the dome, but unfortunately didn't have time. If we had been dedicated tourists, we would have gotten an earlier start.
The Vatican Museum is HUGE, with something like 9 miles of exhibits. If it been only me and Dan, we could have spent the entire day there. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can expect of kids in a place where they have to stand still, not touch anything, and keep their voices down, so we did a quick tour of the most important sections. The kids' favorite part of the museum was seeing a real mummy in the Egyptian section. For most people though, it's the Sistine Chapel that is the most exciting part! (You have to chuckle at what kids find interesting-an amazing masterpiece by one of the greatest artists in history is not too interesting, but a dead body is ultra-cool!)
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| A view worth remembering |
Like I have mentioned before, I can't imagine how crowded it would be in the summertime when tourist season is in full-swing. The closer you get to the Sistine Chapel, you become wedged into a horde of tour groups, and end up missing a lot of beautiful art because if you stop moving forward you would be trampled by the tour guides behind you. I am pretty sure that the long umbrellas that the tour guides use as group beacons could easily turn into weapons if anyone gets in the way of their group.
On to the Pantheon!
The Pantheon one of the best preserved buildings of ancient Rome, and was originally used as a place of worship to all of the Ancient Roman Gods, but was converted to a place for Catholic worship in the 7th century. The dome is almost two thousand years old, and is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.
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| The Oculus |
So, in this post I shared two religious locations we visited in Rome, and in my next post I will share pics of some non-'churchy' locations we visited-the Colosseum, and the Zoo!
(Please forgive my lackluster I-Phone photography. I intentionally left my good camera at home because of the rampant tourist-targeted theft in Rome. There is no way that my mediocre photography skills can do justice to the beauty and character of this city!)
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