Today was the obligatory visit to the Vatican. When I was on my tour of the ancient city yesterday the tour guide offered the Vatican tour for 30 euro and I accepted more for convenience sake. The tour guides I had at the Colosseum and Palatine Hill were...ok, but not that great. I had assumed that part of it was the subject matter (there are a lot of great historical facts, but at the end of the day you need to use your imagination more than anything) as well as the heat. For the Vatican tour we got another new guide: Jill, a theology major from Duke, and she was by far the best of the three guides.

You can’t helped but be impressed with the Vatican. The amount of artwork here is staggering; if you tried to see it all it would take you several years. We just had the highlights tour, which took about three hours.

As with many religious/historical places, we weren’t allowed to take pictures in many places, and in those where photography was allowed it’s so dark as to be pointless. The one shot I did get was of Nero’s bathtub, which is estimated to be worth 400 million euro. That’s not a typo: over half a billion US dollars. As with most of the artwork here, they can’t sell it because it’s so expensive they can’t get insurance for the sale. So here it sits. Poor guys.

The Vatican Museum is really nice, but the big draws are the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica.

I really liked the hallways leading up to the chapel, one of which looked like a bunch of reliefs but were really just flat paintings. The guide kept telling us that the ceiling was flat and the 3D look was a trick, but it was hard to believe until as we left we were able to look straight up and see that the wall was flat.

I’d been reading a book called Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling on the way here, so I ended up knowing quite a bit about the chapel. It’s obviously very impressive, especially when you take into consideration how long ago it was done and the way it was done. I do have to say though that from what I’ve seen Raphael’s work is better than what I saw in the chapel. That’s not to say that the chapel isn’t an impressive feat, it’s just that if you look at Raphael’s stuff it just jumps out at you. 

The end of the tour is St Peter’s Basilica, and it’s last for a reason. I couldn’t believe the scale of everything. And how in the heck did they get those statues placed up high like that? I assume they went through a lot of slaves back then.

As I was walking through it I had a lot of mixed feelings about how the obnoxiousness of it all. It’s a great cultural landmark and everything, but good grief did they really need to go that big with everything? I’m glad that I did this after the Roman ruins, because it struck me that I was seeing was what the Roman ruins would be like if they were kept in tact. So big, so ornate. Of course, much of the material used in the Vatican was taken from the ruins so I guess that’s no surprise. But the similarity did come to mind. I didn't take any pictures during the day but I went back at night when it was lit up.

OK, enough of the art talk.

A few other random things from my guide: 

- Milan is the financial capital of the country, and it used to be a fashion capital but apparently many people are going out of business due to the recession
- Tourism is by far the biggest industry, followed by government work
- An estimated 35% of the economy is what she called “black market”. When I asked what that was she explained that the revenue is off the books, and asked if I’d ever gotten a receipt since I’d been here. I hadn’t. According to her, most of the economy south of Rome is black market.

After the tour I had a quick bite and headed over to Castel Sant’Angelo, which is a very cool location but a bit of a rip as a museum. The best thing about it is that there’s a really nice breeze at the top of the castle.

At that point I’d been walking around for about 6hrs straight, so I decided to go home and rest up for what I was hoping would be a nice evening photo walk. I hit the major spots: Campo de Fiori, Piazza Navona, Pantheon, Trevi fountain, Spanish steps. I can’t believe how many people are at these places at all hours of the night. Here’s a photo of the Trevi fountain taken at around 11:30pm. It’s out of focus, but I took it because I wanted to show how many people were there. This place is just bustling at night.