Vatican Museum

Valerie Fuchs
Sep 18, 2021
2 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRVFY_-p0kA

On our 3rd day in Rome, we were up and at ‘em bright and early (much earlier than most Italians!) to get to the Vatican for our 7:30 a.m. entrance. We took advantage of the Vatican Museums’ Prime Experience—a 3-hour guided tour starting an hour before public opening time and ending with breakfast in the Pinecone Courtyard. We were early enough to be the very first tourists to walk into the Vatican that day!

The Vatican houses major collections of Egyptian and Etruscan art, classical Roman and Greek sculpture, architectural pieces, frescoes, paintings, and much more. Check out our pictures and video because words can’t describe all the beauty we saw. Not to mention, the museums themselves are beautiful arch-ceilinged, marble-floored masterpieces.

A section of the museum is called Raphael’s Rooms and was once part of the papal apartments. Raphael and his school painted the beautiful frescoes that decorate the walls of the four rooms.

The tour included the Sistine Chapel, where photography and video are forbidden. Everyone is familiar with the centerpiece of the ceiling, with Adam reaching his hand up to God, but it was really neat to see the other central panels showing the rest of the story of Genesis. Between and around each panel, Michelangelo painted various saints, angels, and Biblical figures. On the altar wall, he painted the Last Judgement.

After the tour and our late breakfast, we rested until later, when we ventured out for an early evening visit to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. We ate a good Roman pasta dinner at Ristorante Alla Rampa near the Spanish Steps.