Treasures of the Vatican

We started with a 90 minute bus ride from Civitavecchia to Rome. Guide Monica showed us the old fort at Civitavecchia, built by Michaelangelo. We came into Rome via the old Aurelian road to see first the Vatican Museum. Some of the exhibits are exactly as I remember them in 1971. Others, including a new visitors’ reception center, were changed for the Holy Year celebration of 2000. The weather was very cold and windy. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has been cleaned since I saw it some forty years ago. It is utterly magnificent. Perhaps it was the weather keeping crowds away, but our guide said that in twenty-eight years she has seen the Sistine Chapel as empty as it was for our visit only once before. Next we went into St. Peter’s Basilica. As always, it is so opulently, overwhelmingly beautiful that words fail to describe it. A quick visit through St. Peter’s Square still reveals the obelisk which the Romans stole from the Egyptians. The Vatican keeps it because it stood in the Hippodrome, and was a witness to the martyrdom of St. Peter.Read more