VATICAN

The Vatican - it needs no introduction. Some people say Saudi Arabia may be the richest due to its oil reserve - well, after visiting the Vatican - I beg to differ. Not too far from our hotel but we decided to use the taxi anyway coz it was raining. Oh, if you are in Rome - make sure the taxi fare starts at 2 Euro, we only found out on the last day - got cheated for the last few days - charged at 4 Euro!

The view of St Peter's Basilica and St Peter's Square is breathtaking as you drive in.


I remembered the shameful experience of me sleeping in the Louvre in Paris. Yes - sleeping in one of the most famous museum in the world. Why? Coz' everything's French, no translation whatsoever. My only highlight - Mona Lisa painting and Ming tricked me into asking the museum guards where they placed the Last Supper!! It's in Milan Madam, not in the Louvre. I am sure I will find the Louvre as captivating as any artistic soul - I just needed some enlightenment. So this time - Loon and I joined a tour for the Vatican City. Yes it is expensive - but by paying 45 Euro each, you get to enter the Vatican Museum & grounds with an experienced guide and most importantly, you beat the line. I never gave much thoughts to 'beat the line'. Last time, Pearly asked me to book the tickets to Edinburgh castle early to beat the line - well the line wasn't too bad. Perhaps 50-100 person in line? When they say you better book early (I mean 1-2 months in advance) to visit the Vatican to beat the line - it means beating the line to more than 1000 people... I am not joking! Or maybe more... Loon and I were so thankful we took the tour and 'beat the line' as we walked towards the main gate - people were practically lined up around the parameter of the Vatican City (more than a mile long along the city walls)!

You need to be careful though on which tour you follow... when you reach St Peter's Square, you will suddenly be swarmed by a group of tour operators trying to get you to join their tours. We were supposed to be led by a New Yorker, Brendan... but Brendan was stopped by a group of Vatican undercover officers on suspicion of being an illegal tour operator. Brendan may be illegal but luckily the tour company isn't - to make us all happy - they sent their best tour guide - Angelo! From the moment he started talking - we knew we'd have a good time. Being a graduate of European Arts and Drama - we had the best person to do the job. He knew what he was talking about and he knew people in the Vatican quite well - making our tour much more interesting - like only our tour group got to walk the secret staircase where the Pope walked etc...

leading a group of 30 in a very packed Vatican Museum was not an easy task

The Vatican Museum holds the greatest art collections in the world, the museum is most famous for its spiral staircase, the Raphael Rooms and the exquisitely decorated Sistine Chapel famous for Michelangelo's frescos. Without a tour guide - everything you see may look the same. With a tour guide and some homework before your visit - it gets really exciting. You learn about Michelangelo, Raphael and Bernini. I find art quite boring most times - but if you know why Michelangelo drew this and that, you will appreciate the art and you will suddenly find yourself wanting to study European Arts. haha... It is hard for me to explain word by word what I understood and learn from the whole experience - these pictures do not bring enough credit to the real thing - it is nothing we've ever seen before.

Porphyry Tub

Every precious art work especially from Ancient Rome - the Vatican has it. Its most precious treasure - porphyry bath tub. Caesar used it to place food (to maintain freshness of food - coz' the stone is cold) and for orgies. Porphyry is extremely rare and rumour has it that it's extinct and only the Vatican has it now - in 2001, it is worth Euro 21 million, now it's priceless. The guide joked that when Ancient Rome experienced the devastating earthquake, most things fell into the Vatican.

The Vatican is guided by the most loyal soldiers in the world - Swiss Guards

I used to think it was the Gurkhas - but just learnt it is the Swiss. One of the requirement of being a Swiss Guard is 'good looks' haha... their service - 5 years. Sadly, it was found that the Swiss Guard has the highest suicide rate amongst military/uniformed men. Their uniform is designed by Michelangelo.

Inside the Vatican - there is a shopping centre for Vatican residents. They mainly sell branded goods - 20% below tax free prices. Can we shop there? No, only Vatican citizens can.

I must however mentioned what I've learned about the great Michelangelo from the visit to the Vatican: -

1. Why Michelangelo's work on sculpture is perfect? Because he performed a lot of forbidden autopsies on male bodies. He knew very well how every muscle, ligament, joint and bone worked, which allowed him to recreate them through sculptures with great accuracy.

2. It is very difficult to do frescos.

Not supposed to take pics in the Sistine Chapel but CountLoon insisted. Well if you're caught, your camera can be confiscated and you risk being shouted at by the guards. As Kodak won the contract to clean up the frescos, the Vatican gave them all writes to the frescos for quite a number of years, maybe 15-20?

Michelangelo initially refused to do the Sistine Chapel. Frescoing is the technique in which layers of plaster are laid and the outermost layer is painted directly before the plaster is completely dry. The plaster soaks up the paint, so it does not lay on the surface but becomes part of the plaster. The plaster can only soak up so much paint, leaving very little room for correcting errors, short of breaking out a section of plaster and starting over and this means Michelangelo painted the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with no mistakes!

3. Michelangelo simpan dendam! Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" fresco featured naked figures. A few of the Pope's right-hand men wanted to censor the painting (their efforts known as the "Fig-Leaf Campaign"). Biagio da Cesena, the Pope's Master of Ceremonies, complained to the Pope that those frescos fitted brothels and public baths and not the holy place and this didn't sit so well with Michelangelo. In the bottom right corner of the picture, there is a rather ugly old man standing there, nude, with a snake wrapping around him.

4. Michelangelo is a very jealous man.

The Pieta is a depiction of the Virgin Mary cradling Christ's body, presumably just after it was removed from the cross done by Michelangelo koko when he was just 23.

This masterpiece has been behind bulletproof glass since a madman attacked it with a hammer in 1972. Michelangelo disguised himself and hid in the shadows trying to overhear people's conversations upon seeing his creation; when he heard every other artist's name but his own given credit for the work, he sneaked in late at night in a fit of rage, and carved into Mary's sash: "Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made it."

Inside St Paul's

Angelo also told us that the popes were lara croft the tomb raiders in some respect. During the construction of St. Peter's Basilica, they conveniently swiped whatever marble had remained from ancient Rome - from the Colosseum steps, from the Palatine Hill and Hadrian's palace, and especially from the Pantheon. They just stripped the ruins of anything valuable - marble, bronze - leaving the ruins in a worst state than they already are.

I am sure we are both more enlightened after the trip to the Vatican - makes me want to visit the Louvre one more time - with a tour guide of course.