This is the entrance to the Vatican.
This is the only part of the gardens that the public is allowed to see. You can tell that they go on and on.
The Vatican buildings do go on and on as well.
This is one of the courtyards that the public is allowed to enter.
Jackson enjoyed rubbing this lion. This lion came from Egypt.
This is one of the many, many hallways that we walked through. As you can see, there are A LOT of statues from many 1000's of years ago.
There were many (Do you notice how I keep using this word? it is because everything was to the excess.) statues located throughout the Vatican dating from many time periods. I know that an art history major would have gone crazy.
This is one of the beautiful ceilings in the hallways leading to the Sistine Chapel.
This is another one of the beautiful ceilings in the hallways leading to the Sistine Chapel.
One of the hallways lead to this large room. It had statues all around it.
Another hallway with statues. There were a lot of hallways. We were told that every Pope added a hallway leading to the main building. Each Pope wanted their hallway to be better than the last Pope's. They were beautiful hallways.
Another beautiful ceiling.
This floor is made out of imported precious stone. Our guide told us that the hallways were elaborately decorated and the floors were adorned so that when heads of state walked through, they were impressed with the wealth and power of the Pope.
More beautiful ceilings.
This was my favorite hallway. This was the map hallway. The unique thing about these paintings were that the maps were drawn to scale but so that everything was pointing towards Rome. Interesting!
Lauren enjoyed looking at the ceilings too!
This was a water fountain in the courtyard after we had walked through all of the hallways. We had also just seen the Sistine Chapel. There are signs everywhere asking you to not take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, so I do not have pictures inside the chapel. We respected the signs, although there were many people who did not respect the signs. I'm not sure why people were taking pictures inside the Sistine Chapel anyway. Pictures just do not do it justice. It seems like all my life I have seen the pictures of Michelangelo's famous work. It is nice and all, but in my non-artist eyes, they are paintings. After going through hallway after hallway, and down lots of stairs (with two strollers), we finally got to the Sistine Chapel. As soon as we entered the small room, I understood why the paintings were so famous. They are breathtaking. The colors are so vivid. The detail was so incredible. The room had a feeling of peace about it. The paintings told such wonderful stories. We couldn't stop staring at the beauty of the room. There are really no words to describe the Sistine Chapel. You just have to see it.
After seeing the Sistine Chapel, we headed to St. Peter's Basicilla.
Finally, we were at the front of St. Peter's. This is looking out from the front of the church. Before we entered the church, we found out that we could not take the strollers inside. To be honest with you, this really bothered me. First, Jackson was asleep. (If you have been around a very tired 3 1/2 year old that has to look at all of that art and statue after statue, you understand my relief when he finally fell asleep.) I couldn't believe that we were going to have to wake him up to check our stroller. Secondly, I was disappointed that we had strollers everywhere else, but couldn't take them in the sanctuary. Oh well, what can you do.
Here's a picture of Thomas, Lauren and I before we checked the strollers and woke up Jackson.
The view right when you walk inside the sanctuary. I had a hard time getting the pictures to turn out. It was dark in the room, so I had to turn the flash off. The sanctuary was HUGE. The tour guide told us that the one mistake that they made when building the church was that they built everything to scale. I would agree. Because everything was huge, you lost perspective on how big the sanctuary really was.
A close up of some of the details.
You hear about the Popes lying in glass caskets. . . here is one of them.
Towards the front of the sanctuary.
Looking up.
More details. There were statues throughout the sanctuary.
After the tour was over, Papa J and Mama J sat down in the corner of the sanctuary so that Thomas and I could walk around and take a closer look at everything.
The front of St. Peter's as we left the Vatican.
The family.
As we were leaving, we saw the Swiss Guards.
Of to lunch. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment