ROME – THE HOLY SEE & DO

DAY 5

We hopped an early morning taxi from Piazza Barberini near our hotel to the Vatican and took the three hour CityWonders Tour of the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. Who could ask for anything more?

The wait for Sistine Chapel tickets would have been two weeks if we hadn’t bitten the bullet and booked the overpriced ($72 per person) and thoroughly obnoxious tour. Look, sometimes you gotta pay to play, and it would have been ridiculous to spend a week in Rome and not see the Sistine Chapel, right? But I know a scam when I see one and the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

Let’s start with the fact that it was so goddamn crowded that it was actually unsettling. I can tell you that it was beyond anything I have ever experienced — like the world’s most magnificent cattle drive where cows from all around the world were constantly snapping photos with their phones.  It lasted for three long hours. And there was never a point when we weren’t cheek-by-jowl with an army of tourons, moving like a slow motion river from room to room in senseless wonder.

All the guided tours are exactly the same. You find your group outside the Vatican at a chaotic transfer station. You are given an audio box and headphones, so you can hear your English-speaking guide who really doesn’t speak English very well. And then the herding begins as you are led into the fancy modern Visitor Center where you do the TSA security drill of emptying your pockets into plastic bins and walking through a metal detector. Then it’s up and down a few flights of steps, passing display cases filled with hip mementos that have been sent to Pope Francis, like signed jerseys from the Barcelona and Real Madrid football teams, which I thought was pretty cool. Then you exit into a very attractive open area with neatly mowed grass and lined with group learning stations where there are murals showing the various panels in the Sistine Chapel. During this “getting to know you” part of the tour your guide will tell some fun facts about Michelangelo and Rafael, the two artists that worked their artistic magic on the walls of the Vatican.

• Michelangelo was thirty-three and from Florence when he painted the Sistine Chapel.  He bought his own materials because the Pope was too cheap. He had no kids, never removed his boots, and didn’t bathe.  When he died at eighty-eight they found two big chests of gold under his bed and he had no family and no one to leave it to.
• The nasty Pope, Julius the 2nd, who hired Michelangelo, carried a walking stick to indiscriminately beat people he encountered.
• Michelangelo painted everyone naked in the “Last Judgement” and during the Reformation the leaders of the Catholic Church commissioned grand masters to paint clothes on them. Michelangelo would have undoubtedly freaked at such a travesty. Later, after the church returned to earth, the clothes were removed. How weird is that?
• Speaking of weird, peacocks were much revered in the Middle Ages and were considered to be everlasting because they take a long time to decompose.

• If you look closely you will notice that the men and women in Michelangelo‘s paintings all look alike — perhaps because he was asexual and had never seen a naked woman.
• Michelangelo and his major competitor Rafael usually painted each other into their major paintings as a sort of inside joke.
• Rafael was a total whore bag who died in his thirties from syphilis.  But he was so beloved, the Catholic Church still allowed him to be buried with honors in the Pantheon.

After the orientation in the lovely garden you head inside through a series of long, narrow museums that sort of blend together, all building toward the climax which is, of course, the Sistine Chapel. And you can never stop walking. There might as well be a big conveyor belt with calliope music playing in the background.

I found it interesting that the Catholics put Emperor Constantine’s mother and daughter in giant red marble crypts in the Greek (pagan) museum section of the Vatican.  Constantine was the Roman Emperor who legalized Christianity in the 4th Century, but they never trusted him and some believe he was murdered by the Christians who thought he was too enamored with the Greeks. Savior killings were not uncommon in those troubled times.

In truth, I started losing interest pretty quickly because it was all just more of the same Roman statues, Greek gods, nubile garden nymphs being ravished, and Jesus being savagely crucified on the cross. The crowds were starting to really get on my nerves. Inna was lost somewhere in the zombie shuffle. And I was ready to blow a gasket.

And then suddenly, like a ray of god light shining down from the heavens, we entered the Map Room, the most amazingly wondrous museum interior I have ever seen anywhere on earth.  It will burn in my memory forever. Basically, it is a shining golden roof embedded with strange images, stretching off into the distance, like the golden road to infinity. My first impression of it was that it was an optical illusion. And it literally stopped me dead in my tracks, my mouth agape, standing there mumbling, “Holy shit!” like an idiot. It’s called the Map Room because the walls are covered with huge topographical maps of Italy based on the drawings of friar and geographer Ignazio Danti. The gallery was commissioned in 1580 by Pope Gregory XIII who loved maps.

I don’t remember a thing after Map Room until we arrived at the Sistine Chapel. I’m sure it was all forgettably nice.

Before you get to the Sistine Chapel they give you a chance to hit the bathroom, grab a snack in the cafe, or buy some Chinese made Christian trinkets. Your guide will allow about twenty minutes for you to regroup and then enter the Sistine Chapel on your own. They tell you to look for their little flag somewhere along the back wall of the chapel where they will be awaiting your return.

Our little trip through the Sistine Chapel was like being herded to the slaughter house through a big barn with Michelangelo’s most famous frescoes on the ceilings and red and golden curtains painted on the walls.  The Sistine Chapel is essentially a large empty box of a room whose ceiling is a canvas for scary biblical stories like “The Last Judgement”. Give me a crazy surreal Hieronymus Bosch any day over what we saw in the Sistine Chapel. (The triptych below was painted in the 13th Century by Bosch and is called “The Last Judgement”. We stumbled upon it in a small gallery in Bruges, Belgium and it’s insanely surreal!)

We walked silently through the cavernous chapel as the bored guards waved their arms and repeated the same phrase over and over again, “Move to the right.”  At one point a booming voice came over the sound system. “SILENCE!”, repeated in all the major languages, even though they all pretty much say it the same way. I wondered if it was God speaking from on high. All in all, I was marvelously underwhelmed by the whole scene.

After leaving the Sistine box, our tired guide led us through handsome hallways, down marble steps, and under grand colonnades to the truly magnificent St Peter’s Basilica, by far the biggest church I have ever seen.  I especially liked the sunburst altar; the dark, inlaid, wooden something or other, towering over the transept that resembled an elephant carriage; and the colorful marble floors looted from the Coliseum.

Given that the basilica is named for St. Peter, you hear his name reverently mentioned a lot. Saint Peter was killed in 64 AD and is the first and most famous martyr for Christ (witness). Thousands more would follow over the ensuing years. The Romans loved killing Christians in all sorts of ingenious ways. According to legend, Peter was fleeing Rome so he wouldn’t be killed for spreading unrest, when Jesus suddenly appeared and sternly ordered him to go back to the city and face the music. The Romans weren’t messing around and they cut his head off.  For some reason St. Peter is always depicted holding keys. Maybe he was the designated driver.

This was the anniversary of my mother’s death and when I saw Michelangelo’s “Pieta” within St. Peter’s, I remembered seeing it with my mother when I was but a wee lad. She took me to New York City in 1964, to see the World’s Fair where the statue was on temporary loan.  The memory brought a tear to my eye. Isn’t it weird how seeing something like a silly statue can trigger a happy memory that makes you cry so many years later.

We ate yet another “same as the last” Italian meal of the two p’s, pizza and pasta, at the Don Chisciotte Universal Bar on the Vatican Main Street on a warm, and sunny day (68). The people watching was outstanding as the faithful and the curious flocked toward St. Peter’s like moths to the holy flame.

I was sweating bullets in my jeans which I had to wear because, even to this day, the Catholic Church is deeply offended by human skin — men and women’s KNEES in particular. I find this utterly ludicrous and patently offensive on several levels. First of all, every church we entered in Italy had multiple paintings and sculptures of naked souls. But what really pisses me off about this “No Skin Rule” is that it is coming from the Catholic Church, a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise that has murdered and raped millions of people while looting half the treasures of the earth. And, yes, the Catholic Church has done, and continues to do, some truly wonderful deeds around the world, but they are the last people on the planet who should preach about the human body, sexuality, or ethical behavior.

After our visit to the Holy City, we walked along the Tiber River, checking out: the Lungotevere Path above the murky green river; Castel Sant’Angelo (Castle); the Ponte Sant’Angelo (Bridge); Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace); Ponte Cavour (Bridge); several quite interesting rowing and social club barges/boathouses chained to the banks of the Tiber; the Plazza del Popolo (huge plaza with a fountain); the Pincio Overlook where some crazed lunatic on an air scooter sang opera as tourons danced for joy; Piazza Napoleone at the edge of Borghese Park (another happening plaza where folks come to see and be seen); Villa Medici; Trinita del Monti (Catholic church), where beaming teens in red shirts held “Jesus Loves You” signs (I was very tempted at this point in our Catholic pilgrimage to ask them how they knew?); the Spanish Steps where a cast of hundreds baked in the sun, like big pizza pies; Piazza Mignanelli (plaza with a boat fountain); the biggest McDonald’s I have ever seen; a trendy leather shop where Inna bought leather and chinchilla gloves lined with synthetic human scrotum at Catella d’Auria in the ritzy shopping district; and then we finally returned to the hotel to rest before heading back out for dinner. What a goddamn day!

The key takeaways from all these meaningless names and places is that you can easily walk from the Vatican to the city center and see lots of really cool things along the way.

Walked 7 miles

Insider Tip — In Rome there are the must see attractions, like the Vatican. And if you want to walk around the outside, checking out the scene, you’re good to go. You don’t need a ticket and you won’t wait in any lines. But if you want to go inside, well, that’s a different story altogether. The Sistine Chapel is booked weeks in advance. And getting a ticket is confusing. In most European countries, including Italy, they have initiated a “Skip The Line” option. It’s exactly what it sounds like. You get to skip the line. The problem is, they also usually sell out very quickly. And you still wait in line — a shorter line, but it’s still a line. Then there is the line for the great unwashed (those who didn’t plan ahead) and that one stretches off into the sunset. You will easily wait for hours in that line. But, you can always go online and buy a ticket — a severely overpriced ticket — with one of the local tour companies. They are essentially scalpers. They buy up blocks of “Skip The Line” tickets every day and if you go with them you get inside quickly. Some have guides, while others just meet you at the gate and get you into the attraction. Inna and I went with the overpriced tour company option because we didn’t want to commit until we saw what the weather was going to be. If it was going to be a sunny day, we didn’t want to be inside a stuffy museum. But if it was going to rain, we wanted to be inside. So, that meant we weren’t sure what we were doing until the last minute, and that meant our only choice was to pay the big bucks with a tour company. And all we really got was access to the venue because the groups were huge — basically a cattle drive — and the guides spoke pigeon English and could not be understood. I wish I could steer you toward the right option, but they all suck because the must see attractions are super crowded every day. Pick your poison.

Insider Tip — If you plan to go into one of the major churches in Italy, be sure to wear long pants and shirts with sleeves. I won’t beat a dead horse on this issue. Suffice it to say it’s absurd. But we saw some really angry folks at the Duomo in Florence who had waited in line for several hours only to be turned away at the door because they were wearing shorts. And, just to make it more ridiculous and confusing, none of the smaller churches enforce this petty rule. So, in theory, you could be vanquished in any church at any time … or not.