We started today with a 3 and 1/2 hour tour of Vatican City (the smallest country in the world located right in the middle of Rome - center of the Catholic church).
Our tour guide was phenomenal! She knew so much history and so many interesting facts. I didn't get bored at all. We walked through the entrance and the first thing you see are the beautiful gardens. They were absolutely perfect!
We soon headed into the Sistine Chapel. It's quite the maze of elaborately decorated hallways to make your way to Michelangelo's famous painting.
Each hallway was adorned with tapestries, frescoes, gold inlay, and mosaics. This is just an example of one of the many hallways we walked down. We finally made it to the famous painting in the Sistine Chapel. It's quite amazing. The room was absolutely packed full of people but we had the opportunity to find a seat and just enjoy the painting. Our tour guide did her best to explain quietly to us different interpretations of the paintings, but you're not suppose to talk while in there. This is just another one of those things you have to go see to understand.
After a bit, we were able to make our way out to explore St. Peter's basilica - the largest in the world. It truly is humongous. You don't quite grasp the enormity of the building while you're walking through but this is because the scale is sooo large and the proportion of everything is so exact. It's not until somebody tells you the dimensions of certain objects in the room that you just stand there in awe at how small you are in such a large basilica.
Just to give you an idea of the scale, that canopy in the middle is 9 stories tall! Inside the basilica! The letters in the gold band of the dome are each 6 feet tall! It blew my mind.
I had no idea the famous Pieta statue was in St. Peters. It was actually quite a bit smaller than I anticipated. It also has thick bullet proof glass in front of it so you can't even get very close. In my opinion this distracted from the power and meaning of the statue. But you gotta do what you gotta do when crazy people take a sludge hammer to the statue and almost destroy it. Just like in the statue of David, Michelangelo didn't do exact proportions. It's interesting to note, that n order to portray Mary's sorrow more, he made her quite a bit larger in proportion than Christ's body.
After the tour of the basilica, we were able to head outside and see St. Peter's Square. Oh my goodness it is breathtaking!
There are two rows of columns around the square that are positioned so perfectly that if you stand right in the middle of the square it looks like just one row of columns. It's really quite cool.
There are Swiss guards everywhere dressed in authentic outfits. The criteria for being a Swiss guard are as follows: must have Swiss citizenship, be male, unmarried, trained in Swiss military, between 18 and 30, and at least 5 feet 9. Funny eh?
The second window in on the top floor is the famous window that the Pope waves from when on television. I've never seen him do it but apparently it's a very common thing.
After the tour ended around 2, we had free time for the rest of the evening to head back to Rome and spend the day wandering the shops and exploring. Kelsey, Stephani, and I had quite a bit of fun. We headed back to the hotel, stopped at the local market for lunch (crackers, strawberries and pudding), and fell asleep on Kelsey's bed for a few hours. Those long tours are exhausting! When it had cooled down a bit we headed back into the city for some fun :)
Although we got lost and wandered around in circles for quite some time, we didn't mind in the least :) I'd get lost in Rome any day...
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