We started the day by visiting the Vatican Museum, probably the best museum in Italy. You enter the museum up this long, winding ramp in a tower. I'm not exactly sure what the original design of the tower was, but it seems that the Vatican designated it to be the entrance to the museum in order to tire out all the tourists, perhaps to get them to leave early. Our original plan for the museum was to see the Sistine Chapel first and then see whatever else we wanted to see in the museum.
However, this didn't happen as we kept following the signs "To the Sistine Chapel". Well, if you only want to see the Sistine Chapel, do not follow these signs, as the four different "planned routes" all leave the Sistine Chapel at the very end of the tour.
But you do get to see some other fascinating art, such as the impressive Map Room of the Vatican, which has maps but also ornate, painted ceilings. The museum is incredible and has art from all over the Mediterranean, including a vast collection of classical Greek and Roman sculpture. If you are into sculpture, then this is your place. Those popes sure knew how to pick art.
At the end of the museum route (all four of them), is the Sistine Chapel, the masterpiece of the Vatican Museum. One can only imagine how one man, Michelangelo, painted most of the ceiling and walls. Anyway, I can't describe it, nor do I have any worthy photographs of the ceiling. But from the before and after the photos, the restoration work that occurred during most of the 1980s and early 1990s was worth it. It brought out the vivid pastels and bright colors that originally covered the ceilings.
A sidenote: On our way out of the museum, we stopped at the Vatican cafeteria, where we had the best Italian food of our trip. Everything else paled in comparison, and it was incredibly cheap. A must-eat on a trip to Rome!
After our hours long trek through the Vatican Museum, we headed to that other great Roman monument, the Colosseum. The Colosseum is only a fragment of its past beauty. The holes in the walls of stone once held iron bars that held the white marble that lined the outside and inside of the Colosseum.
Not only did people take the marble, but they also took the iron bars. People also took an entire floor of stone as well, such that some parts of the Colosseum were reconstructed with brick to try to fill in the gaps. One can only imagine the glory that the Colosseum once inspired.
The flip side of this is of course the horrors that occurred in the Colosseum. After eavesdropping on an introductory "free" guided tour, I was shocked to hear the details about the violence and sheer waste that occurred during the imperial days. Thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of animals were killed in the Colosseum for "sport". There are probably few bloodier places in the world than the Colosseum.
On a lighter note, we then walked to the Roman Forum. Again, it was but a shadow of its former glory, with few monuments and no temples standing. Nearly all of its marble had been robbed over the centuries, leaving only a column here or a column there. The only intact anything were the two arches. Otherwise, the Forum could have been an archaelogical dig.
We then walked up the street to the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of the modern united Italy. It is also known as "The Typewriter" because of its unflattering resemblance. It too was covered with scaffolding because of the reconstruction woes.
Further up the street is Trajan's Column, Trajan's monument to himself and his reign. You can't see too much in person, unless you cross the barricade and physically get close enough to touch the Column, but there are some cool friezes. From a class in Roman history, I know that the column mostly depicts battles won by the Romans, including the sack of Jerusalem during which Herod's Temple was destroyed after an unsuccessful Jewish revolt against the Romans.
After admiring the column, we decided to call it a day, and head home. We were both pretty tired with our sight-seeing for the day. I was starting to feel pretty run down, especially with all the walking we were doing on streets that were pretty polluted. Rome's air quality is very crappy, and that's coming from someone who grew up mostly in Los Angeles. So, we piled back into the metro with all the other tired tourists and headed back to our pension.
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since July 4, 1998.