If money was no object, I would spend the next year diligently ticking off all of Europe's biggest, "must see" sights.
Regular readers will roll their eyes. "Travel is always what you would do if you didn't have to earn a living, Ellen." True. But the year ahead is a very particular one. It's set to the be liminal zone between a time of total travel shut-down and a return to the world as it was. I am sceptical that lessons from the pandemic or the plight of the planet will keep anyone from long-haul travel. If anything, taste for it will have increased as everyone has dreamed of unattainable foreign climes for two years. Now, for a very short period while travel is technically allowed, but the hassle and increased expense of it is causing people to hesitate, there's a window for those of us who live in Europe to enjoy our continent's wonders without the pressure of too many outside visitors. Do I have any problem rubbing elbows with Americans, Chinese, and Australians at the Tower of London? Absolutely not. But as I've often written here, the places we all want to see simply weren't built for the numbers who want to see them. For years, my sightseeing strategy has been to head for lesser known alternatives to all those Top Ten books. For this brief window, we can head for the big bets.
I proved that theory last week in the Vatican Museums. My last visit in 2006 was so awful I vowed never to return. Every hallway was thronged, every significant artwork required queuing to take a look. You risked life and limb getting in the way of bus tours being marched at high speed through the long galleries on their must-see pilgrimage to the Sistine Chapel. The Raphael rooms were as crowded as a London tube at rush hour, and the Vatican had built a new covered walkway on the outside of the building to stagger entry into the Sistine. Yes, after a mile of walking and no place to sit, you had to stand for more than half an hour just to press, body-to-body, into that famous room of Michelangelo's wonders.
What a difference a pandemic makes.
Our only queue was for the obligatory vaccination and temperature check at the front door. (This is because we pre-booked. Walk-ups waited.) By mid-day there was a healthy crowd, but you could always get a photo free of humans if you were patient. You could actually find a seat in the Sistine Chapel immediately upon entry. It was blissful, and I spent the whole day there.
“There” being the whole museum complex, not the Sistine Chapel. Yes, that famous room is beautiful, especially since its cleaning in the 1990s. It wows you with its vibrant pastels, and there's no denying the power of Michelangelo's figures.
But I resent the fact that so many visitors are here to see only this, treating all the galleries on the way as an opulent race track. I think the whole visitor experience would be improved, and museum revenues boosted, if they offered a Chapel-only ticket at a premium, a museum only ticket at a discount, and a third tariff if you want to see both. There are so many masterworks to enjoy in the museums, some of them ... in my opinion ... better than Michelangelo's offer. But such major change is unlikely. The crowds will return, and the distances won’t change. So here’s my best advice for making your visit a joy rather than a chore.
PLAN Pre-booking tickets is essential. Go for the opening slot. Before you go, spend some time with the museum map working out what you want to see. There are seven kilometres of corridors and because the place is essentially a very long, narrow rectangle with a one way system, you’ll walk most of them. The Sistine Chapel is, naturally, at the far point from the entrance. You can leave the bulk of the galleries near the entrance to see later, but once you start down those long corridors there’s no easy way back, so take the time to see what interests you. The main route takes you through the Museo Pio-Clementino (the most famous of the Greco- Roman statuary), before starting down those long hallways. Once you get to the Raphael Rooms … the heart of the papal apartments, don’t miss the turn to the Borgia apartments. While not quite as magnificent, they feature a series of tiled floors and coffered, painted ceilings it would be a shame to miss, and because it’s a dead-end dogleg at the far end of your route, it’s easy to do so.
Even if you are walking briskly and looking at little, you’ll need 45 minutes to get to the Sistine. A typical visit is three to four hours, but you can easily spend … and I would recommend … an entire day.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF Ignore everyone else. Set a pace that works for you and enjoy it. There are few places to sit so take advantage of them. The first is in the Cortile Ottogano, an eight-sided courtyard open to the sky close to the start of your hike. Though you may be full of energy, I still recommend pausing to sit here and take in what’s always been considered the best of the Vatican statuary. It is a beautiful space. You won’t see benches again until the Borgia Apartments, and then soon after in the Sistine. Have a good rest there before your return journey.
The current tourist route forces you through the modern art museum between the Papal Apartments and the Sistine. You used to go directly from one to the other, and it appears it’s still possible if you ask the guards nicely. There are some lovely Chagall paper cut-outs in the modern galleries but the rest is uninspiring. So if exhausted, ask a guard in the last of the Raphael rooms if you might use the shortcut.
Since my last visit the Vatican has dramatically improved food service, though it’s all on the entrance side of the complex. The standard circle tour will end near both a self-service food court and a small cafe that opens onto a section of the gardens open to the public. There is also a full-service restaurant in a marquee in the Cortile Della Pigna that you would have seen when you entered. (Nice wines, freshly-prepared pasta, not too expensive, with pleasant views around the courtyard.)
It’s a much more civilised option though, counter-intuitively, you need to follow signs to the exit to get to it. Proceed as if leaving and you’ll return to the top of the entry hall between the Pinacoteca and the Pio-Clementino. Cross straight over and your back beneath that famous pine cone. If you decide to spend the whole day in the museums, a leisurely lunch here is the perfect way to restore your energy before round two.
BRING BINOCULARS The ability to see details adds to the enjoyment of the Sistine Chapel, but this isn’t the only place binoculars will be useful. There are decorated ceilings throughout the complex that deserve attention, particularly in the Papal Apartments. And there are several windows with magnificent views over Rome or the Vatican Gardens that reward magnified viewing.
APPRECIATE THE ARCHITECTURE If someone took away the more than 70,000 items on display (and some have tried), this would still be an amazing building to explore. Look up regularly. the Sistine is just the biggest of the lavish ceilings that decorate the place. Pay attention to details, from tiny keyhole covers to vast marble inlaid floors. Look out the windows; most views have been arranged like a living painting.
For my money the two best architectural sights along the way are the gallery of the maps and the rooms of the Vatican Library. Pope Gregory XIII commissioned the map gallery as a tour of the papal holdings in 1580. It’s essentially a detailed look at Italy, region by region, starting in the South and working your way up the boot before culminating in maps of the whole peninsula, one contemporary and one Ancient Roman. The maps are works of art in their own right, embellished with cities, the occasional historical scene and decorative extras. The ships, sea monsters, water nymphs and putti gambolling off shore are a particular delight. The 40 panels in the 120-metre long gallery are surrounded by lavish ornamentation inspired directly from the then newly-discovered Domus Aurea, and the ceiling is one of the best in the complex. This room alone would be worth the price of admission.
As would be the Sistine Corridor of the Vatican Libraries, located directly below the map gallery. These rooms are even more influenced by the designs of Nero’s Palace, and are a joyous riot of colour, landscape and classical myth.
GO BEYOND THE SET CIRCLE TOUR If you can spare the full day, there’s much more to see beyond the already rich offerings of the walk to and from the Sistine Chapel. A turn off the route from the Pio-Clementino galleries takes you into the Egyptian section, with a collection that rivals any museum in the world. While there’s an enormous amount from ancient Egypt itself, the most fascinating stuff to me is all the Egyptian-inspired fittings from Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, now moved here.
I’ve already mentioned the Borgia apartments. Another “dead end” (currently; the doors at one end are sealed) is the Braccio Nuovo, or new wing. It’s the bright white, obviously newer side of the Cortile Della Pigna. Instead of taking the steps up to the main rooms of the Pio Clementino, you turn the other way and go down a long hall filled with Roman busts on each side. At the end, turn right and you’re in a magnificent gallery built after the Napoleonic war to house all the goodies stolen by, and recovered from, the French. The Augustus Prima Porta and the reclining statue of Father Tiber are amongst the blockbuster statues framed by magnificent architecture and marble floors inset with ancient mosaics. The 1820s building set the model for just about every neo-classical 19th century museum wing to come after.
Most people walk straight by the Ethnological Museum on their way to the exit without giving it a glance. If you buck the trend you’ll find yourself wandering almost alone amongst glass cubicles stuffed with exquisite craftsmanship from Africa, Asia and the South Pacific. There’s a magnificent model of a Hindu temple in Indonesia that the Vatican has funded restoration on, and a fascinating collection of terracotta busts of Native Americans fashioned in the 19th century.
The pinocateca, or picture gallery, is another of the museums that rarely sees much traffic. And yet it’s stuffed with glorious religious art, including Fra Angelico, Giotto and DaVinci. There are more Raphael paintings, here, but you’ve drunk your fill of him in the Papal Apartments. I’d make my make way here for just three glorious masterpieces. Turn your attention to Raphael’s tapestries, woven to grace the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel on special occasions and displayed here in near darkness to let their colours sing. Londoners may know the preparatory sketches from their esteemed place in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the real thing is so much better. Melozzo da Forli is lesser known, but his heavenly host of musical angels are sublimely beautiful and have graced millions of Christmas cards. Supreme over them all is Caravaggio’s Deposition from the Cross, one of his most powerful works.
You might prefer the Etruscan museum, the coin and stamp collection or the early Christian art museum, none of which I managed to get to on this visit, or on previous ones. It is, after all, one of the biggest museums in the world. And for a few months more, I suspect, magically under-attended. If you have any chance to get there, or to any of the other great cultural sites, get there while numbers are still low.
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