t Hightlights of the Vatican Museums complex
C3 ⌂ Città del Vaticano (entrance in Viale Vaticano) @ 49 to entrance, 23, 81, 492, 990 q Ottaviano San Pietro, Cipro # 9am–6pm Mon–Sat (last admission 4pm), 9am–2pm last Sun of month – free entry (last admission 12:30pm); low-cut or sleeveless clothing, shorts, mini-skirts and hats are not allowed ¢ Religious and public hols ∑ museivaticani.va
Home to the Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms as well as to one of the world’s most important art collections, the Vatican Museums are housed in palaces originally built for Renaissance popes Julius II, Innocent VIII and Sixtus IV. Most of the later additions were made in the 18th century, when priceless works of art accumulated by earlier popes were first put on show. Strung along 7 km (over 4 miles) of corridors, these incredible collections form one of the world’s largest museums.
Experience Vatican
t Hightlights of the Vatican Museums complex
Among the Vatican’s greatest treasures are its superlative Greek and Roman antiquities, together with the magnificent artifacts excavated from Egyptian and Etruscan tombs during the 19th century. Some of Italy’s leading artists, such as Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, are represented in the Pinacoteca (art gallery) and parts of the former palaces, where they were employed by popes to decorate sumptuous apartments and galleries. The absolute highlights of this complex of museums are the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael Rooms, which should not be missed.
t The monumental spiral staircase designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932
Insider Tip
Booking tickets in advance online is strongly recommended, preferably for an afternoon in the middle of the week. Saturday and Monday are the busiest days. Head straight to the Sistine Chapel, then make your way slowly backwards.
Experience Vatican
Timeline |
1473Pope Sixtus IV builds Sistine Chapel |
1503-13Pope Julius II starts Classical sculpture collection |
1508Raphael begins work on Rooms; Michelangelo begins painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling |
1541Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is unveiled |
1655Bernini designs Royal Staircase |
1758Founding of Gregorian Profane Museum |
1771Founding of Pio Clementino Museum |
The Vatican’s prize pieces of Greek and Roman sculpture form the nucleus of this museum. Most of the works are Roman copies of lost ancient Greek originals, notably The Laocoön, a violenty contorted Hellenistic work showing the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons struggling to escape from the writhing coils of a sea serpent. Also here is the Apollo Belvedere, considered a paragon of physical perfect-ion by Renaissance artists, and the muscular, contorted Belvedere Torso, whose influence can be seen on Michelangelo’s ignudi (male nudes) in the Sistine Chapel. A menagerie of animal-themed sculptures and mosaics are gathered together in the Room of the Animals.
On either side of the museum are two staircases. The original spiral stairway designed by Bramante in 1505 is open only to special tours. The modern double helix stairway, commonly called the Snail or Momo Staircase, was designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932. It was inspired by Bramante’s original.
tClassical sculptures gallery in the Pio Clementino Museum
Bramante designed the spiral staircase so that it could be ridden up on horseback.
In a space infused with natural light, the Gregorian Profane museum spans Classical antiquity and includes large marble fragments from the Athens Parthenon, Roman copies of Greek sculptures and a striking mosaic from the Baths of Caracalla portraying full-length figures of athletes.
Ancient Egyptian cults and culture became extremely fashionable in Imperial Rome, and the collection here consists chiefly of Egyptian antiquities brought to the city to adorn buildings such as the Temple of Isis (which once stood near the Pantheon), Villa Adriana at Tivoli, and the Gardens of Sallust to the southeast of the Villa Borghese park. Also on display are painted mummy cases and tomb finds.
A long corridor is divided into three contiguous galleries. The Gallery of the Maps displays 16th-century maps of Italy’s regions and papal territories painted as if Rome were literally at the centre of the world, with areas south of Rome, such as Sicily and Calabria, appearing “upside down”. The Gallery of the Tapestries has early 16th- century silk, gold and wool tapestries woven in Brussels to designs inspired by Raphael, while the Gallery of the Candelabra has immense marble candle holders.
There are some splendid Renaissance works from all over Italy in the 18 rooms of the art gallery. Don’t miss the fragments of frescoes of apostles and angel musicians in Room IV by Melozzo da Forlì or the exquisitely romantic Madonna paintings by Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico in Room III. Room VI is devoted to the fabulous world of the Crivelli brothers, 16th-century Venetian artists who depicted fragile doll-like Madonnas enclosed within elaborate painted frames of fruit and flowers. Raphael has an entire room (VIII) devoted to his work, notably The Transfiguration, which includes a woman with red-gold hair, who is thought to have been his lover, La Fornarina. Next door in Room IX is a single, rare work by Leonardo da Vinci depicting St Jerome in the desert. There are also notable paintings by Titian, Crespi, Veronese and Caravaggio.
The museum complex is absolutely vast: the Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms are 20 to 30 minutes’ walk from the entrance, without allowing for any viewing time of other collections along the way. It is best, therefore, to be selective. Visitors have to follow a strict one-way system.
Although Michelangelo had studied fresco-painting under Ghirlandaio, until 1508 he had mainly gained fame through his work as a sculptor. Nonetheless, Pope Julius II commissioned him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which would result in one of the greatest masterpieces of Western art.
At the time, the ceiling was painted simply blue, with golden stars. Michelangelo frescoed over the old ceiling painting between 1508 and 1512, working on specially designed scaffolding. He persuaded the pope to give him a free hand, and spent four years painting 366 figures from the Old and New Testaments, illustrating the bibilical stories of the Creation of the World, the Fall of Man and the Coming of Christ. Ignudi (male nudes) are depicted around these frescoes. In the spandrels surrounding the vault are sibyls, prophetesses from pagan mythology, which, in the Renaissance, were adopted by Christian artists as figures who could foresee the Coming of Christ. The central painting, The Creation of Adam, portraying God reaching down from a cloudy heaven to create Adam, is one of the most reproduced religious paintings of all time.
tMichelangelo’s breathtaking ceiling frescoes
Experience Vatican
From 1979 until 1994 a huge restoration programme was carried out. Five hundred years of soot, candle smoke and glue – along with breadcrumbs and retsina used by earlier restorers, and brush hairs and fingerprints left behind by Michelangelo – were removed. The faded, eggshell-cracked figures were discovered to have rose-petal skin, lustrous hair and to be wearing luscious strawberry-pink, lime- green, lemon and orange shot-silk robes. Critics were surprised that Michelangelo’s palette was so bright.
The massive walls of the Sistine Chapel were frescoed by some of the finest artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. The twelve paintings by artists, including Perugino, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Signorelli, show parallel episodes from the lives of Moses and Christ. The altar wall was repainted by Michelangelo between 1534 and 1541.
Twenty-four years after he had finished the Sistine ceiling, Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Paul III Farnese to cover the altar wall of the chapel with a fresco of The Last Judgment. Michelangelo drew on Dante’s Inferno. The painting is a bleak, harrowing work, showing the damned hurtling towards a putrid hell, the blessed being dragged up to heaven, and saints demanding vengeance for their martyrdoms, a theme chosen by the pope to warn Catholics to adhere to their faith in the turmoil of the Reformation.
Michelangelo’s self- portrait is seen on the flayed skin held by St Bartholomew in The Last Judgement.
In 1508, Pope Julius II asked Bramante to recommend an artist to redecorate his private suite of four rooms. Bramante suggested a young artist named Raphael. The resulting frescoes swiftly established Raphael as one of the leading artists in Rome, putting him on a par with Michelangelo. Raphael and his pupils took over 16 years to fresco the rooms.
The frescoes here, started in 1517, were executed mainly by Raphael’s pupils and show the triumph of Christianity over paganism, focusing on key moments in the life of Emperor Constantine.
t Hall of Constantine, a celebration of the triumph of Christianity over paganism
The theme here is divine intervention and includes The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple and the dazzling Liberation of St Peter, in which an angel frees St Peter (a portrait of Julius II) from prison.
The frescoes here celebrate the Renaissance ideal – the ability of the intellect to discover the truth. The key work is The School of Athens in which Raphael painted leading Greek philosophers in a vaulted hall.
This celebrates a miracle in 847, when Pope Leo IV is said to have extinguished a fire in the quarter around the Vatican by making the sign of the cross.