Rome ~ Day 3

August 10, 2008 by ~ AM ~ 2 Comments

Thank you sooo much to all who left comments on my previous post… glad you are enjoying the pictures and stories. 🙂 Here is the next update…

On our final day in Rome, we went to the Vatican. Got up early and had breakfast at our usual cafe before taking the metro there.

While we were walking towards the Vatican, we could already see throngs of people so we knew we would have to queue (again) to get tickets in. Anyway, we were approached by one of those tour guides and we decided to go on a guided tour… we could skip the queues (yay!) and we’d have someone walk us round and give us info. LOL! If not, we’d be walking around without knowing what we’re looking at. 🙂

Yup, we each got one of those earphone thingys again. 🙂

So after clearing the security checks, we entered this big open space with a huge, shiny, globe sculpture in the middle. It’s suppose the be rotating but apparently not on the day we were there.

There were ancient art pieces, statues…

This is a statue of Laocoön and his sons. There’s an interesting story behind this sculpture. Go check it out! 🙂

Ok.. we entered the museums next, many rooms, many many exhibits and I can’t remember all of them. Sorry but here are the pics. 🙂

Beautiful, exquisite ceiling art.

This is the Belvedere Torso. It is a fragment of a nude male statue. The contorted pose of the torso and musculature were highly influential on late Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque artists, including Michelangelo and Raphael.

I personally was in awe of the tapestries gallery… panels upon panels of handwoven tapestries. It is quite awesome! This last picture is the story where King Herod ordered all male infants to be killed.

Painting of Peter in the cells and being rescued by an angel.

After the galleries, we entered the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside. But is was just magical to see it in real life. The ceiling painting by Michelangelo were amazing. And the painting (2nd below) of the Last Judgement behind the altar was incredible. I took these pictures off Wikipedia… 🙂

The exit of the Sistine Chapel led us out and into St. Peter’s Basilica. It was magnificent.. I think the pictures will tell the story. 🙂

Hmmm.. so that was day 3. We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant near our hotel and after getting back we got our stuff packed for our train early the next morning to Siena. 🙂