Despite us currently being in a significant thunderstorm, the weather for the day worked out nicely. We started our day relatively early and headed to Vatican City. The walk was a couple miles but highly desired as we have been missing our morning jogs while indulging in vino, pasta, and gelato everyday.
Our timing in Rome couldn’t have worked out better as on Wednesdays the Pope comes out to address the Papal audience. This was quite an exciting experience as thousands of onlookers tried their best to catch a glance of the pope as he drove around in his mini-Lamborghini and then addressed the crowd.
After visiting with the Pope, we begged a private tour guide to allow us to join his group after hearing his introduction about St. Peter’s Square. In the end we were pleased with the extra coin we dropped as we found the wisdom he shared about the Vatican and the ancient Roman world quite interesting.
The tour lasted about 3.5 hours and included a tour of both the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica. While in the Vatican Museum we enjoyed the works of thousands of artists and the sculptures, paintings, frescoes, mosaics, and tapestries that they created over the past thousands of years. The museum tour was rightfully concluded with the opportunity to view Michelangelo’s famous ceiling frescoes while walking through the Sistine Chapel.
After the Museum tour we continued over to St. Peter’s Basilica. This was quite an impressive sight. The basilica is ENORMOUS… measuring 187m long (the largest Roman Catholic Church ever built). It is hard to describe the feeling of standing inside the structure and what you experience as you look to the other end and up in the air at the touring ceiling.
There are beautiful statues and mosaics throughout the basilica with works completed by the world’s most famous artists like Bernini and Michelangelo.
One other interesting sight inside the basilica is taking a look at a pope that was buried decades ago yet to date has no signs of any decomposition. He was connected to a miracle and later removed from his burial ground for postmortem inspection. It was discovered that the only change in his physical appearance was a loss of pigment due to oxygen deprivation while underground. The sight of his body was quite interesting, particularly when we heard that no special chemicals or “mummification process” had been connected with the preservation of his remains.
Following our long tour of Vatican City we strolled back to our B&B stopping along the way for a couple of beers and paninis. We also visited a fire station in the heart of Rome, making it back to our room just in time to miss the rain. Rome has been quite enjoyable and we look forward to concluding our time here with a nice dinner before heading off to Florence sometime tomorrow.
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