Vatican Romin'

Here's a photo album that has pictures from our tour of Ancient Rome and the beginning of our adventures in the Vatican. Tomorrow I'll attach another album with the rest of the Vatican and our final day doing as the Romans do.

Warning: Beyond this place there be art.

Our hostel in Rome was one of the strangest I’ve briefly slept in. Josh and I woke up at our usual 7-ish and saw people! The showers were occupied and we puttered around, fighting for breakfast rolls and downloading photos from our cameras. The photo part took a little longer than expected and we got a later start than planned when we boarded the subway and started rolling to Vatican City.

We popped out of the station (with an Angels and Demons poster overhead. Clearly someone saw a marketing opportunity) and didn’t see much that would indicate a separate, sovereign country was nearby. Literally no street signs or big arrow that said “Vatican.” A very German-looking tour group was walking in a direction that seemed right-ish. We compulsively followed.

And there we were, walking along the massive wall that encloses the smallest country –by landmass and population – in the world. This independence has only existed since 1929. I’ve always thought it was pretty cool that the Catholic Church has its own country, but really it’s a shadow of its former real estate. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the only stable power in Rome was the Church. It ruled Rome for centuries. In order to keep the Catholics from meddling with Mussolini, he separated them from Italy. I just wish they required you to stamp your passport when you cross the border.
Because we were running a little late, we forwent the traditional entrance through St. Peter’s Square and went straight for the Museum. It was sprawling and at varying stages of modernity. Some displays offered detailed explanations of the art and artifacts (the Eutruscans were particularly well-covered) while others barely offered the artist's name (the Renaissance Picture Gallery). I waffled over getting expensive audio guides to accompany the journey. Josh just dove in. I followed. Really, he had the most to gain with the guide anyway since it would have shut me up. Maybe by now he’s learned his lesson.

We started with the Early Christian Art, most of which was recovered from the catacombs that surround the city. Early Christians used a very different iconographic language than their Medieval counterparts. Where Gothic churches are filled with images of the crucifixion and the Madonna (to the point where you wonder if there’s anything more to the Christian story than Death and Mary) the sarcophagi were covered with intricate scenes of redemption and miracles. God stays the hand of Abraham, Jonah makes it out of the Great Fish, and Jesus raises Lazarus.

The Good Shepherd (not actually a representation of Christ) was eclipsed by the Christ on the cross. There's an interesting psychological shift to think about.

Why don’t we use these more jubilant images more often in Christian iconography? We’re still more interested in the martyred saints than the Love of God. But that’s just my two cents.

Our first taste of Raphael through his Transfiguration.

Then we entered the picture gallery to spend some more time with Late Medieval artists, the Renaissance masters like DaVinci and Raphael, and then into the Baroque with Caravaggio and Ruebens.

Caravaggio showing the internment in the tomb.

But we’d seen a lot of that before. So we headed into the Ancient Art.


The Vatican literally has entire hallways packed with ancient statuary. Every patrician’s bust ended up in their vaults and every emperor is represented at least six times. The noble robes of politicians and bared flesh of the gods leads the way to some of the most important statues from the ancient world such as Laocoön and His Sons.

The doomed priest is famous for saying, “I fear the Greeks, even when bearing gifts.” The gods didn’t like his suspicions about the Trojan Horse, so they sent giant serpents to kill him and his sons. The bulging muscles and vivid expressions were shocking to Hellenistic Greeks and a revelation when they came out of the ground and people like Michelangelo took a gander. The statue was impressive, but not nearly on the scale I imagined it. Laocoön is life-sized if slightly smaller and fits comfortably in his niche in the courtyard of the Belvedere garden.

Another highlight of the Greeks was this bizarre statue of the Nile who seems to be suffering a plague of babies rather than a plague of frogs:

Mummies, Eutruscan jewelry, and Greek Pottery paraded by. We were flashing back and forth across 3,500 years of art history and the whiplash was starting to wear us down. It was time to settle comfortably in the Renaissance. Down a sequence of hallways that must have stretched for a half-mile were gorgeous Flemish tapestries.

Along a massive stretch of hallway were 40 maps, primarily of Italy, all painted by a single cartographer. On the ceiling were painted scenes from the lives of the saints and Bible that somehow corresponded to each region and country. It made me wish I knew my Italian geography better, not to mention the lives of the saints.

We were getting close to the Main Event as we followed signs for the Sistine Chapel. But first we needed to see Raphael’s masterpieces including the School of Athens in which all the heroes of the Renaissance get dressed up as Greeks. Davinci takes a turn as Plato, Bromante (the guy who designed St. Peter’s) is Euclid, Raphael as Apelles, a famous Greek Painter and so on.

Then it was time to see Michelangelo. Throughout the week Josh had been reading “Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling” by Ross King and had been our source on Renaissance characters, especially Mike. He was grinning his dimples off as we finally stepped through a small door and looked up.

The ceiling is expansive and incredibly high. This is a key point because you need to crane your neck to take it in. You look up, then need to roll your vertebrae, and try to soak it all up again Figures ripple with motion and energy. As with so many other famous work’s we’d seen, it lived up to all the hype.


On the wall below the story of Creation is Michelangelo’s later Last Judgment. The Optimism of the Renaissance was fading in Italy (the Reformation had started to divide Europe) and the Last Judgment shows it. Instead of balanced figures elegantly aloof, we see pain and anger as a muscular Christ (with a torso borrowed from a statue of Hercules) hurls sinners downward. Something Baroque and Mike wasn’t ready to fix it.

Then we finally popped out of the museum. We had probably walked a couple of miles through the halls, but we still needed to see the object of our religious pilgrimage: St. Peter’s Basilica. After a quick sandwich at the cheap but poorly advertised museum cafeteria, we walked out and followed the wall through a colonnade and suddenly broke out into Bernini’s St. Peter’s square. Hundreds of columns formed massive arms embracing the devoted. We saw the windows the Pope occasionally pops out of (he was in the Holy Land at the time we were there) and searched for the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. We never located it.

Time to go in. Walking past yet another obelisk and more signs to cover our knees and shoulders, we crossed past the sealed Jubilee Door and entered the Cathedral. It wasn’t all that shocking. I think I was more moved by my first view of the Cologne Dome. It just didn’t seem all that big. Then I saw people shuffling around near the alter, barely discernible forms under what looked like a normal-sized canopy. But the canopy was 100 feet tall. The scale slowly sunk in as I realized the statues were two stories high. It was massive, but everything was massive. The figures ensconced near the ceiling were larger than those at ground level. With the perspective they looked like they were the same size and the roof closer than it was. It was hard to appreciate the scale without people crawling on the ceiling.

This scale is intentional. The building was built to hold tens of thousands (60,000 have crammed in before). That’s a lot of people and you can feel lost in a massive, distant place of worship, so the scale makes it feel smaller, more intimate like your worship space at home. Except my worship space doesn’t sport work by Michelangelo, Canova, or Bernini.

Under the grate is the tomb of Peter and the reason to build the massive worship space that surrounds it.

I don’t know how spiritually moved I was as I gazed in awe at mosaics, the play of the light over gold leaf, or the Statue of St. Peter that has been an object of devotion for centuries. I wasn’t really thinking about God. I was thinking about the men who had conceived this project, who had built these walls, and installed the art. There is no modern building that took such effort. I know the logistics of building a sky scraper or stadium are daunting, but we use steel. We have motors. This was all built with simple machines and muscle in the 16th century. All for the glory of God, but also demonstrating the achievements of men.


Onto the street. On to food. We followed a Lonely Planet recommendation to a restaurant called “Dino and Tony.” The façade didn’t look like much. In fact we walked past it at first. It was roughly 7:00 PM when we poked our heads in the door. It was dead. One table sat eating. That was it. Suddenly the perfect stereotype of the Italian restaurant owner burst from the back. “To eat?” “Yes.” Suddenly another guy appeared the room was entirely rearranged as tables merged and divided. We stood and watched the swirl of activity we had somehow sparked. When the dust settled, we were shown to a neat table in the center of the room.

Tony asked something. Josh instinctively nodded. Another question. He nodded again. Tony was confused then turned to me, “Bianco? Rosso? (White? Red?)” “Bianco.” Then another question. We nodded.

Soon we had a feast spread before us. We had ordered a half-liter of white wine and an antipasta plate that was actually made up of three plates, one with a pizza, one with fried things, and a final cheese and meat plate. We had planned to just stop in for a snack. This was dinner. We watched Tony bicker with Dino and help a couple decide what kind of pasta they really wanted. I think he would be ready to make-up a whole new recipe on the spot if you wanted him to. When we told Tony it was time for us to move on without pasta, he looked hurt. After a day spent recharging my Catholic roots, my guilt almost forced me to order something.

But we made it out, and started to hike towards the Castel Sant'Angelo, a set piece in Angels and Demons, and refuge for Popes on the banks of the Tiber River. We thought it would be a nice walk around the building, but as we approached we saw a large gathering of people. We were curious what everyone was excited about. I saw a sign that said “1000 Miles” that had a Fiat logo on it. Then the engines roared and we saw a parade of cars from the 1930s go by. Reporters interviewed the drivers who were on a cross country race and had reached a check point. I really wanted to cross the Castel bridge which was near the main stage and the sitting VIPs, so I dove into the crowd. I also wanted to see the speaker’s platform. This was not one of my better ideas.

The crush of humanity increased its pressure around us as we got closer to the bridge. I haven’t felt that cramped since I saw Obama in Prague. Children were being passed over the crowd, or were nearly crushed under the spectators’ feet. Finally we broke onto the bridge. Josh gave me a look that said “Never Again.”

We sat and watched the proceedings from the bridge with our feet hanging over the Tiber, decompressing after a day spent absorbing some of the most important pieces of art in Western Civilization. It was heady stuff which meant we needed beer, gelato, and bed. Only one more day in the Eternal City…

The pictures one more time.

A Day in Pompeii

Welcome to the 100th post on Die Wanderwege und Die Beobachtungen. That’s a lot of stuff about Europe, and there’s so much more to tell. Since getting back from my Italian adventures with Josh, I explored more of the Rhineland, saw Leipzig and Dresden, then took off for a week of wandering through the famous fossil localities of Germany. I have many, many stories yet to relate. Hopefully you still have the patience and interest to hear about them. If not, thanks for checking in every now and then and enjoying some more of my “Wanderings and Observations.” - Matt

The photo album of Pompeii. The first half is from the archeological site and the second half is from the National Archaeological Museum where they keep all the delicate stuff they’ve found in Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Sitting in Latin Class with my textbook “Ecce Romani” (Look, Romans!) in front of me, I would often drift from the exercises and look at the pictures. Everything seemed to come from Pompeii. Statues, mosaics, artifacts. It’s impossible to imagine how little we would know about life as an ancient Roman without this city.
On one terrible day in 79 A.D. the nearby Mt. Vesuvius erupted for the first time in 1,200 years and the city was buried in ash and mud from landslides that rocketed down the mountain faster than the speed of sound. In 1738 a worker unearthed artifacts from Herculaneum and later excavations expanded to Pompeii. It was a revelation. The art was exquisite and the technology shockingly advanced. The city was carefully planned and managed. Everyone fell in love with the ancient world leading to Neoclassicism (the era of Empire waists and Revolutionary thought). I fell in love with it a little later.

Looking at the images in Ecce Romani, I would wonder when I would get to the site. I knew I would, it was just a mater of when. Well, turns out May 2009 was the time to dust off the Latin skills to marvel at the city frozen in one terrible moment.

We had a confusing, stilted conversation at the tourism office in Naples about buying tickets at the train station or at the site. We still aren’t sure we got a good deal, but I am relieved to this day that I was able to extract myself from the conversation. The train was populated by drunks, people yelling at the wall, and dozens of tourists. We all nervously watched each platform go by and finally piled off, a hoard wielding digital cameras and sun block ready to sack the city.

Before going to Pompeii, I never really understood what it meant to say an entire city was buried. Only a fraction of the city is exposed to the air, but it’s a massive place packed with winding alleys and hundreds of homes and businesses. It’s a city and you can actually get lost. This is why it was pretty inconvenient that the ticket office was out of maps. Figures.

Roughly our first hour in Pompeii was spent stumbling upon significant sites – the theater, the temple of Ceres, the 5th century Greek temple – without having a clue what would come next. There’s a certain thrill in such pure exploration, though the thrill is reduced slightly by also stumbling upon a half-dozen tour groups trying to check out the flushing toilets of Pompeii.

It’s also a problem when you’re not sure if you’re moving through the city as efficiently as you could if you had any idea where you were. But we dealt and explored.

People lived in Pompeii for centuries, starting with the Italian Oscans, then Eutruscans, then Greek settlers and later Romans. The city experienced a couple of fires and earthquakes, and was still trying to recover from the damage caused by a massive earthquake in 62 (no apostrophe necessary). Then in 79 the city was frozen in time.

Most Roman and Greek ruins require a lot of imagination. Most buildings left to their own devices have a way of giving way to the persuasive powers of erosion. Columns, roofs, and streets need to be reconstructed to even begin imagining what “real life” was like. Not necessary on these streets. The cobbles stones have worn ruts from hundreds of passing ox carts. The food stalls are equipped with jars for oil and wine. The enclosed entry hall opens to the courtyard. It’s incredibly beautiful and so quiet. Despite tour groups, it was easy to find a corner of the city to imagine toga-clad patricians coming home from work or hanging out at the bathes.

The amphitheater could still echo with the voices of thousands, and the marketplace resound with screaming hawkers. The vibrancy of the scene is quickly undercut by a visit to the excavation warehouse where thousands of amphora are piled, and the plaster casts of victims are on display.


When the city was being excavated, the workers kept discovering inexplicable bubbles in the ash. Then someone decided to pour plaster into the cavities. What emerged were ghostly forms of people finally succumbing to the toxic fumes spewed by Vesuvius. It’s horrifying, but makes the whole city weirdly personal. Instead of bones, you see a full form. You can imagine what the person looked like in life and a conversation begins about the problems of the Empire and the hustle of every day life. After walking through the city - with rocks marking pedestrian zones, and lead pipes making water available at every intersection - I realized I have more in common with a 1st century Pompeiian than I do a 13th century German. In many ways we’ve taken 2,000 years to get back to where we were at the peaceful peak of the Pax Romana.


Josh and I continued to explore the wide main avenues and marvel at the size of the city, but eventually had to grab a lemon ice, and head back to the city to see the artistic treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum (the sister-city of Pompeii and a resort town where wealthy Romans kept summer villas away from the crowds). It was a bit of a shock to the system to emerge from the train station to the chaos of Naples, but we muscled through and found the Pepto-Bismol-Pink Archeological Museum.

We bought our tickets, found the lockers, and started to put our stuff away. A dull roar built behind us. As I turned the key, the storm broke and about 50 sixth-graders swarmed in our direction. We were swamped, fighting through a human fortress of BO and braces. When we emerged on the other side I realized I was allowed to bring my camera along. Josh looked horrified, like he would never see me alive again as I dove back into the hoard to reopen the locker.

The rest of our visit was punctuated by sudden escapes from these huge gaggles of Italian school-children who were just as affected by the anatomical requisites of nudity as American kids. Somehow I thought Italian kids, raised with nudity in ads and on TV really wouldn’t care. They do.

The museum housed literally tons of incredible statuary including towering Caesars and laughing fauns. The most impressive was the Farnese Bull. The sculpture shows the larger-than-life sons of Antiope tying Dirce to a charging bull after she insulted their mother (a scene replicated in the Roman Ampitheaters with captured women and Christians tied to a charging, angry bull). It’s the largest sculpture ever recovered from the ancient world (except for the Egyptian monothiths I guess) and it’s all carved from a single block of marble. The muscles tense, and the bull twists. Like I said, incredible.

Then came the mosaics. On every wall were minutely detailed images composed entirely of rice to penny-sized tiles showing shaded actors dragging out masks, lions attacking leopards, and recognizable fish in still-life.


In the dry world of the Mediterranean, these mosaics were the best way to create beautiful pictures that wouldn’t fade. The largest and most famous depicts Alexander the Great on a life-size scale, routing the Persians.

The mosaic uses realistic expressions, perspective, and foreshortening, techniques lost after the fall of Rome, not to be reborn until the aptly named Renaissance. Until that moment I never realized how many artistic skills were lost when the barbarians came knocking and plundering.

In the next room the frescos were exercises in balanced composition and geometric depth. Figures have realistic proportions and shading, things Giotto became famous for dragging out of the closet again in the 15th century.

The museum also housed artifacts such as charred tablets detailing the day of a slave family’s release from bondage.

Behind a curtain was displayed a terrifying tableau of skeletons, victims of the Herculaneum burial. Nearby was “The Secret Room.”

The citizens of 18th century Europe were a little…prudish. They didn’t let their wrists see the light of day, let alone their necks. Imagine the workman’s surprise when he starts uncovering the frescos, mosaics, and statues that adorned the city’s brothels, bachelor villas, and temples to Venus. In order to protect 18th century citizens, especially women, from the ribald objects, the Secret Room was created and survives to this day (though women can go in to gawk now).

At peak times you actually need to get an special ticket and entry time to view Pan getting frisky with a goat and prostitutes showing why they get paid to do what they do. The whole process seemed a little…dirty, like walking into a neon-lit strip joint, or an dark alley peepshow (not that I’ve done either of these things). You get your ticket and everyone in the museum sees you going in. One kid really wanted to follow us. He was roughly eleven and the guards had to keep chasing him from the doorway. I don’t know what I would have done with these images in my head at that age. At the same time I feel like the objects would lose some of their seediness if they were displayed with the rest of the art instead of artificially aggregated thanks to the straight-laced tastes of 18th century Italians and Frenchmen.

After a final swing past the mosaics, we went back into the streets for our last night in Naples. We sipped Italian sodas and watched vehicles run down pedestrians. We walked along the bay and found a small pizza place near a fortress that once protected the harbor. Drinking wine and later cocktails while getting into a heated argument over the merits of Titanic the Musical we said goodnight to the city that tried so hard to kill us. Now it was Rome’s turn. Do you know which road leads there?


The photos of the site and the artifacts, sans tour groups, school children, and sunburn!