Vatican City

There is so much history in Vatican City and so many collected works of art that it is impossible to appreciate everything. It just becomes a blur of frescoes and sculptures and canvases. So everyone focuses on the big ones because they stand out: the basilica, the sistine chapel, and the largest and most important paintings. The other 99 percent of the city is largely ignored and skipped through. To be in the Vatican museums is to be submerged in a river of people and carried along in a current of bodies. You might try to fight the current for a while, to stay a little longer in one room, but in the end it is not worth the effort and you just let it push you along.

Groups of people flock to the Vatican well before opening, standing in line along the city wall. I was early enough that I was inside within 15 minutes of opening and immediately raced to the Sistine Chapel, which lies at the end of the linear path through the museums. This gave me the opportunity to gaze in awe at it without the jostling crowds, and I spent nearly an hour in this room alone. The chapel itself is a flat rectangular box of a room without any decorations save the paintings covering the walls, but the paintings give the illusion that there are heavy drapes on the walls and carvings along the ceiling. It really does look 3-D.

I won't even try to describe Michelangelo's paintings, or Raffael's or Botticelli's. The museum has hoarded so much of Europe's great art that it's astounding. From the Sistine Chapel, I reentered the museum at the beginning and spent five hours I didn't realize was passing. By then, I was running out of time to see St. Peter's Basilica. Like the rest of the Vatican, St. Peter's defies description. The interior is the largest enclosed room I have ever seen and it feels so big that it is unreal. Like looking at the Grand Canyon, it's difficult to comprehend the size of it.

Unfortunately it started to hail as I left the basilica and not wanting to battle Roman rush hour in the ensuing rain, I ended my day at the Spanish steps, where a group of Spaniards held their flag and sang their anthem boisterously, Japanese tourists gawked at them, and Italians largely ignored them. Well, I've seen all the major sights in Rome, tomorrow morning I go to Pisa.