Travels Around Roma Part XIII: I Musei Vaticani

This is my journey through the Vatican Museums, or i Musei Vaticani.  It was the last couple of weeks before my program ended and I realized that I hadn't been to the Vatican Museum yet.  The irony is that I lived literally a one minute walk from the entrance of the museum.  Its just down Via Candia like 2 blocks and the around the corner on the right, but I kept putting it off.  So one day I just went in.  It wasn't that busy and I think I did this in between classes or something like that.  You go from the old-looking yet massive Vatican walls to a modern museum inside in one second, and its really cool.  This museum has full handicap access and looks completely modern (mostly because it is).  The weird thing is that was my first time really inside the Vatican even though I lived right next to it.  The tall walls make it difficult to see inside, so there's definitely an intrigue into walking by something everyday but not knowing what's inside.  So anyways I bought my ticket on a student discount of course, and since its all tourists there they are guaranteed to have someone speak english.  Mondays always have the longest lines for that museum, and I saw tons and tons of tourists in lines for that museum all the time, and I even had to battle through them on my way to school.  Sometimes the line got over a kilometer long, but when I went there was no line really so that was cool.  Well I bought my ticket and off I went...

Here is a scale model of the Vatican, its own country of course.  They also have parts of their country scattered around Roma, but this is the jist of it.  I lived next to the Vatican of course in a place called Residence Candia on Via Candia and in reality its just a little bit off the right side of this model.  The Pope was my neighbor.  We laughed, cryed, became good friends, shared old stories, and truly bonded.  Fun times (I barely saw him speaking once in Piazza di San Pietro on that little stage you see in the piazza). 

Here it is finally! Finalmente! A view of the dome from INSIDE the Vatican.  No more walking outside of the Vatican seeing the same old view again and again.  I actually got tired of seeing the same piazza again and again, and yet I would love to go back there right now rather than be in San Diego.  And the view is pretty much the same but with trees, since there are barely any trees in Roma outside of Villa Borghese (the city park thats huge and in a previous post).

I always walked on the other side of this entrance guarded by funny-dressed Swiss Guards, and now I finally see where it leads to.  I was hoping for a little more than a single driving lane with parked cars, but oh well.

The view above is right when go outside from inside the museum.  When you go to the right you hit this...

And this the side of the courtyard you can't see in this picture...

Along the right wall there is a sphinx but he looks really nice and friendly.  And like everything else its marble.

Here he is again.  A nice pet to have if he were real, but I'm not quite sure why he's in the Vatican Museum.  This is probably really old and significant and valuable or something like that, and you notice by the Obelisks around Roma and in St. Peter's Piazza itself that the Vatican always has a connection to when the Roman Empire conquered Egypt long ago.  

These pictures told me what to expect once I continued my journey.  Apparently some guy named Michaelangelo scribbled some stuff with crayon on some wall.  

Here is another view of the main end of the internal courtyard.  I'm not sure what the giant pine cone is doing but I definitely want those black cats and that fountain is pretty cool too.  As far as the peacocks and the giant pine cone goes, I'm just confused.  

And here is another view of the full hemisphere roof.  Why this is like this is a guess to me, but shapes in buildigs are always a winner and there are plenty of those in Roma, especially Piazza di San Lorenzo with the buildings imitating a ribbon flow (sorry no picture, but I was there for my Urban History class; it's near the pantheon).

If you look at the first courtyard picture, you can see a door. In that door is the hallway at runs along the wall of the courtyard.  It is known as the hall of marble because it has more marble statues than you can imagine.  This first statue is a statue of Marcus Aurelius (a slight guess), and the whole hallway is filled with these excavated from all over Italy and brought here.  Sorry I cut off the head but this is all have for this one (usually I redo a bad shot but my camera was dying on me again like usual).  

Here is a statue of Hercules himself.  You can always tell its him because he mythologically slayed a lion and now carries the carcass with him at all times.  That and the club he carries around are always the sign that you're dealing with Hercules.

This is dedicated to the Roman emperor Tiberius.  Romans believe that Romulus and Remus are the descendants of the gods Mars and Venus, among others, so the mythological people and the Roman emperors are all Roman to them.  And just note that this was all carved by hand with expensive colored marble a really long time ago. Pretty impressive.

This of course is Base With Dedication to Caius Vedennius Moderatus carved from 81-96 AD.  Vedennius Moderatus was of course a seminal military engineer and this statue honors that.  

This was the one picture I took of the hall itself.  Marble everywhere on both sides all the way down the hall.

Here is a statue of Caesar Augustus, or just Augustus as he's known.  He always has a battle scene on his body armor and is doing an imperial pose.   You can see the level of detail on this statue thats probably around 2000 years old.  I want one of these in my house.  I wonder how much they are...

When I look down at the floor of my apartment now, I see a slightly stained beige carpet.  In the Vatican Museum, the floor is a mosaic in the middle of marble.  I was impressed enough to take a picture...

Here is a description of what is to come.  It's basically a giant metaphorical description of the Nile River. 

And here it is.  It has a cornucopia, a sphinx, angels, exotic animals; the whole enchilada. No description is really needed, if you want one look at the picture above. 

Well that does it for this post.  To be continued soon...