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March 2004

Vatican City

David Aaronson
2005-10-01 16:57:37

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The Vatican City (or Holy See) is technically the smallest country in the world thanks to a treaty with Italy in 1929 which granted it independence. There are less than 1000 people living there, and it is also one of the world's wealthiest countries since it has all the money of the Catholic church at its disposal (more or less). This is the view from the Palatine Hill. The dome of St. Peter's pretty much dominates the Vatican skyline.

There are two major sights in the Vatican City, St. Paul's and the Vatican museum. The museum takes up a lot more time and seems to have an endless number of display rooms. We waited in line for about an hour to get in, and amazingly resisted the gelato stands across the street from the line.

The hall of maps consists of a fabulous set of paintings of all the regions of Italy and the known world. The maps that most of the Italy pages are prefaced with have come from this room. As you can see, the ceiling is an attraction in its own right (2). Most of the people in this hall are rushing down to the far end so they can see the Sistine Chapel but this was probably the highlight room of the museum for me. There is also an interesting room of early clocks and similar mechanical inventions that I rather enjoyed.

Some of the rooms that now display artwork (actually quite a lot of them) were originally the apartments of some former Pope. Pius IX for instance had his seal inscribed on the ceilings of his chambers.

The Raphaelite rooms are quite impressive as well. Like Raphael's famous 'School of Athens' painting depicting several Greek philosophers. There's a lot of discussion on who is who in this painting, but it seems to be generally accepted that the central figures are Plato (left) and Aristotle (right). Diogenes is sprawled on the steps, Epicurus drinks from the fountain on the left. Pythagoras kneels with a sketchpad on ...