At the weekend, I went to Rome. I booked the flights on the morning of April 16th – that’s the morning after the Notre Dame fire, because that Monday evening I realised that those huge historic permanent monuments that are part of our very existence are not as permanent as I thought. The Sistine Chapel – I’ve always thought I’ll do the Sistine Chapel one day. But that could burn down tomorrow. Hence flights to Rome. Same reason I went up in the roof of Winchester Cathedral the next weekend.
So Friday evening found me at Ottaviano metro station looking for the door to the Vatican.
You can go during the day and queue for hours. I daresay you can book tickets online and go during the day and not queue for hours. But the option I went for was Vatican Museums by Night, which is when the museums open specially on a Friday night during the summer. The day sessions finish at 6 and then it all reopens at 7. I wasn’t sure I could get there by 7, not with a flight getting in to Fiumicino at 3:45 but I went for the 8 o’clock slot and I made it in time, even with a pitstop for food. Here’s a tip for Rome in general and the Vatican specifically: if you think you’re going to be hungry or thirsty, take cash. I walked past so many vending machines while trying not to drop dead from dehydration because I didn’t have enough coins to get a bottle out of them. I eventually had to resort to going into the bistro in the courtyard and pleading “Can I get a drink here that I can buy with a card????” Yes, I can. No food, no ice cream but a drink is fine.
Anyway. I had my voucher and I had my appropriate skirt covering my knees instead of my shorts that don’t. I’m not used to prancing around foreign cities in a skirt but I’ve warmed to that one enough that I’m wearing it right now.
Finding the right queue is a difficulty. There seems to be a general public take-your-chances queue and a group online booking queue and another queue that didn’t fit but nothing for prepaid. So I asked one of the staff who ushered me into the group online queue, which was less a queue and more of a rabble. I put my bag and my yellow jumper through the metal detectors and then followed the rabble up the stairs where there were ticket machines. You scan your voucher and it spits out a ticket. This is spelled out very explicitly at the top of the voucher but it turned out a lot of people had missed that detail, judging by the number of people fighting their way back from the turnstiles. Scanned the ticket at the turnstile and I was in.
I’d come specifically to see the Sistine Chapel and that was my first stop. Sure, there was plenty more to see and I’d see that in time but first I wanted to see the ceiling. You have never seen anyone charge around the Vatican like I did on Friday night. Tour groups have no spatial awareness and nor does pretty much anyone else. The guide stops, the group stops in a rabble around them, completely blocking corridors. It didn’t help that I seemed to be the only person without a map and I didn’t find the signs too helpful, leading me to do a complete circle in a rage. Also, the museums are designed so you get to the Sistine Chapel almost last, which really didn’t help.
But I found it. At ten past eight in the evening, before the vast majority of people have made it, it’s relatively quiet. I went back later, after having a little look at everything else and it was absolutely packed at 9.30 – and this is considered the quiet semi-private evening session! I can’t imagine what it’s like during the day in high season.
This is the holiest of holy places, in the Catholic church. This is the Pope’s private chapel, this is where the conclave is held to choose a new pope, this is a special place. Therefore certain behaviours must be adhered to. No photos in the Sistine Chapel – the rest of the Vatican is fair game but not in this room. Knees and shoulders covered. No talking, no eating. No talking was no problem. I was on my own and while I’m a mutterer, that was quiet enough. No one paid attention to this rule, which meant every now and then one of the bouncers would get on the microphone and demand silence in a voice that echoed around the room. That usually got the noise level to drop but it gave the room an air of expectation – why do we have to be quiet, what’s about to happen? And then when nothing happened, the volume went up again. As for no photos, there was a man in a black suit with a big bushy ginger beard who spent the entire night approaching people to say again and again “No photo. No picture. No picture. No photo”. It’s not for fear of damaging the art – you’re not allowed to use flash anywhere in the Vatican, which is fine by me because I can’t think of any time I’ve ever wanted to use the flash anywhere ever. Is it because it’s so holy? I don’t know, is the Catholic God offended by people wanting a record of his glorious ceiling? Maybe. Is it a habit they haven’t let go of from many years ago when a Japanese company financed the ceiling’s restoration for a price of three years’ copyright? Most likely. That copyright expired long ago. I’ve been in churches where you put a couple of Euros in a machine to acquire a personal photo licence – they could implement that here, make a fortune even if only a fraction of people bother to do it properly and we’d go away happy with good photos.
What did I make of the Sistine? Well, the room itself is uninspiring. It’s a big rectangle with a few steps at the front and a Juliet balcony on the side. My guidebook called it “barn-like” and that’s pretty accurate. The ceiling? It’s not to my taste, I wouldn’t put it on my own ceiling. But that’s not to say I disliked it. It’s quite something. It’s so very busy, there’s so much up there. There are priceless paintings around the walls as well but no one cares about them, they’re literally overshadowed by the ceiling. I spent a while figuring out where the walls ended and the ceiling began – which bits did Michaelangelo actually paint? The internet was no help here; it used too many architecture and art words I don’t understand but I think anything above the white triangles was him although unhelpfully, I think the arch-shaped bits over the windows were him too.
The main bit is the series of nine paintings down the middle. Then you’ve got the frames and the naked people surrounding them. Then you’ve got the prophets and sybils on the curved edge of the ceiling and the medallions and the columns and the skulls and and the cherubs and the little naked people. It’s almost 3D, you catch yourself squinting up there trying to work out what’s a feature and what’s just paint and almost all of it really is just paint. And it’s all so bright! On the postcards, it’s all grey-tinged. Presumably the postcard photos were taken pre-restoration and no one’s bothered to get them redone. The real thing isn’t grey at all, although the colours pale in comparison with the great blue spectacle of The Last Judgement on the altar wall, which came five or ten years after the ceiling, commissioned by a different Pope.
I’m not into art or culture. I’m never going to be able to appreciate the ceiling for the work of art it is, possibly the greatest work of art in human history. But I thoroughly appreciate it as a piece of something special and important and so what if it’s not to my taste? That doesn’t make the whole effect any less overwhelming. I knew more or less what the ceiling was going to look like when I walked in, although I admit I didn’t expect it to be quite so high. I stopped and said “Wow…” out loud in direct contravention of the rules. It doesn’t matter about your opinions or indifference to great art, it’s still a wow moment to see it for yourself. I sat down on the benches around the edge to spend as long as I needed drinking it all in. The benches are also priceless works of art so they’re covered in shiny clear plastic over-benches. By the second time I came in, my feet were burning, so I slipped them out of my sandals and onto the cool marble floor. Of all the miracles the Church has done and/or witnessed, surely the Vatican could lessen the discomfort in my feet. I wore those sandals for a couple of days on the Laugavegur Trail last year; I don’t know why they decided to hurt in Rome.
Several years ago the BBC did a radio adaptation of Nigel Planer’s play On the Ceiling, which is about the painting of this ceiling, mostly from the point of view of two of the fresco labourers. They spend the first half of the play infuriated at the histrionic Master, who’s having a terribilatah and a wobblioni and hasn’t turned up for the third time in a month, leaving them to do all the work while he gets the glory. They talk a lot about the technicalities of frescoing and in particular about the time “Milly” painted Noah and the Flood onto soaking wet skim which subsequently developed mildew and had to be hacked off and redone (using up all the blue paint too). No idea if that story was true but I kept a special eye out for that picture, and for The Drunkenness of Noah (“Doesn’t it sort of ruin the story if we paint them all naked too?”) and the medallion Lapo tried to ruin. I’m possibly the only person who’s ever walked into the Sistine Chapel more interested in its relationship to a BBC afternoon play than the great Renaissance artist.
Anyway, the rest of the Vatican museums aren’t greatly interesting to someone with my level of interest in art and culture but I noted that the Vatican really goes in for elaborate ceilings and lots of gold. I know the Catholic Church is one of, if not the, richest institutions in the world but it’s much easier to see that here than in the little hexagonal church you’ve attended a wedding and two christenings in. I started to wonder if they had a minimum spend on cards when I wanted to buy postcards at the kiosks (they don’t) so that I could throw a wobblioni of my own at this ludicrously rich church refusing to pay a few pennies in card operating fees. Yes, I bought postcards of the ceiling. If I’m not allowed to take photos, I may at least let them make a little bit of money out of me for postcards.
Tips for visiting the Vatican museums and Sistine Chapel:
- Take coins for drinks from the vending machines.
- Don’t go in shorts.
- Ottaviano is a closer metro station than the officially recommended “closest” Cipro.
- Change your prepaid voucher for a ticket at the machine at the top of the escalator before you get to the turnstiles.
- You don’t need to go with a guide and you don’t need an audioguide. That means you can do it in any order you like, including charging straight to the Sistine first.
- No photos in the Sistine, obviously.