Welcome to our Tour Of Italy April 2007- Vatican Museums

Vatican Museums is one of the most important Museum in the world housing very important masterpieces from Egyptian Age to late Renaissance.

The museums are composed of several sections:
The Gregorian Etruscan Museum
was founded by Pope Gregory XVI in 1837 and mostly contains objects that starting from 1828 were found in the excavations of the ancient cities of southern Etruria , then part of the Pontifical State.

The Pinacoteca
was inaugurated on 27 October 1932 in the building especially constructed by the architect Luca Beltrami for Pope Pius XI.

The Missionary-Ethnological Museum
was founded on November 12, 1926 by Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) . It was established in the Lateran Apostolic Palace up to 1963, when the Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) had it transferred to the Vatican. It was opened to the public in 1973.

The Raphael Stanze
("Raphael's rooms") in the Palace of the Vatican form a suite of reception rooms, the public part of the papal apartments. They are famous for their frescos painted by Raphael and his workshop.

The Sistine Chapel
is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope, in the Vatican City. Its fame rests on its architecture, which evokes Solomon's Temple of the Old Testament, its decoration, frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists, including Michaelangelo whose ceiling is legendary, and its purpose, as a site of papal religious and functionary activity, notably the conclave at which a new Pope is selected.

Finally after a half hour queue, we entered the entrance of the Vatican Museums. We passed through the large crowd, entered the Gregorian Museum, then the Raphael Stanze and up to the Sistine chapel. The sculptures and painting were incredible particularly those by Raphael and Michaelangelo. Walls and ceiling were filled with frescoes such as the Creation of Life and the Last Judgment. Words cannot describe the beauty of the Renaissance Arts. Only photos taken were able to capture a small percentage of what we saw with our naked eyes.

Vacation Trip to Italy April 2007 -Vatican City

Next stop was Vatican City which is the smallest sovereign country in the world. Our coach has to cross the Tiber river to the west bank in order to reach the Vatican.
Vatican City, officially State of the Vatican City is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. At approximately 44 hectares (108.7 acres), it is the smallest independent nation in the world.
It was created in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756 to 1870). Vatican City can be said to be the governmental capital of the Catholic Church.
The territory of Vatican City is part of the Mons Vaticanus, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields where St. Peter's Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, and museums were built, along with various other buildings on the west bank of the Tiber river.
In 326, the first church, the Constantinian basilica, was built over the site that Catholic apologists as well as noted Italian archaeologists argue was the tomb of Saint Peter, buried in a common cemetery on the spot.
The papacy is a non-hereditary, elective monarchy, chosen by the College of Cardinals. He is the only absolute monarch in Europe.
The pope is elected for a life term in conclave by cardinals under the age of 80.
The current Pope is His Holiness Benedict XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Bavaria, Germany.

The moment we entered the boundary of the Vatican City, we can see a large queue of at least 3 blocks long all waiting to enter the Vatican Museums, a treasure house of the Catholic faith with vast collections of ancient and Renaissance art. We joined the queue with a local guide who provided us with hand phones fixed at a certain frequency so that we can listen to his commentary. As the Vatican Museums which leads to the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica are places of worship, we were supposed to keep quiet and wear clothes appropriate to the location( ie no miniskirts,shorts,low cut blouses etc).