Italia Day 22 - Roma

Our awesome tour guide, Luke, from the day before, had told us he was running a tour of the Pope's House early the next day. We knew we had to do it & were really looking forward to the application of his dry humour to the subject matter.

Unfortunately (and not the fault of Luke), the crowds at the Vatican are the most ridiculous sight I have ever seen. From the line up of over 1hr just to get through security screening, to the 30min queue for the toilets, to the crush inside the Vatican museums, I didn't really enjoy any of it. Despite being pretty much pushed by the crowds from behind the whole time to keep moving through the galleries, I did manage to take some photos & learn some stuff. This is a statue of Apollo - Michelangelo used the face from this statue as the face of Jesus in the Sistine Chapel.

And this is a torso of Hercules - this is what Michelangelo modelled Jesus' body on.

One of the gallery contains marble statues of animals. I liked this Boar.

And this monkey.

Close up of one of the Raphael tapestries.

The gold-leaf ceiling of one gallery.

The next stop after the Vatican Museums was the Sistine Chapel. Obviously, not allowed to take photos in there. Despite feeling quite unwell & claustrophobic by that stage, I did still enjoy hearing about the history of the frescoes.

To our great relief, soon we got a breath of fresh air & room to actually stretch our arms. This is looking out over St Peter's Square, with the all the chairs set up ready for the Pope's weekly address the next day.

The immense entry of St Peter's Basilica.

The right foot of this St Peter statue is pretty much worn away now - people come to rub it & receive a blessing.

The huge dome. It's impossible to convey the scale of this church - remember it has the largest interior of any church in the world.

A Swiss Guard outside the Basilica. These guys have such a serious job, but I can't help but giggle a little bit over their uniforms.

Looking up at St Peter's from the square.

Surrounding the square are huge columns - 4 rows deep - designed by Bernini. There is a point marked on the square - when you stand there the 4 rows of columns should line up exactly so it looks like just one row. It really works!

Because of the crowds and the delays our 4 hour tour turned into about 5.5hrs. We started wandering along the river. This is a bridge (too lazy to look up the name), lined with marble statues.

The Castel Sant'Angelo has provided refuge for a number of Popes over the years - there is a tunnel between it & the Vatican.

View back to St Peter's from the banks of the Tiber.

Meandering our way back to the hotel, we stopped off at the Pantheon to have a look.

Big crowds again, but the scale of the building could handle it.

As soon as you walk through the door your eyes are drawn upwards to the Dome & the open skylight - as it was designed to do.

View from the outside, showing the church behind.

Next along the way was the Fontana di Trevi.

It's a huge fountain, but boy, so were the crowds. We still managed to get close enough to throw our coins in though.