The Vatican is a city within a city and the Vatican Museum is actually many museums within a museum. The original museum began in the Cortile Ottagono as a collection of sculptures gathered by Pope Julius II (the same pope that commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling) and you can still see the first sculptures bought for the collection, Apollo and the impressive The Laocoön.

The Vatican Museum as we know it today wasn’t opened to the public until the late 18th century, during the time of the popes Clement XIV (1769-1774) and Pius VI (1775-1799).

The museums within the Vatican encompass galleries, rooms, hallways, the apartments of Pope Julius II, and of course, the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican collection includes work from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as Etruscan antiquity, work from the Renaissance, works brought out of the Catacombs, and modern Christian work. A person could easily wander around here for days on end, sometimes alone, sometimes cheek to cheek with the next museum goer, depending on which gallery they are in. The Sistine Chapel always seems to be crowded …

Some of the highlights of the Vatican Museums:

– The Laocoön, was uncovered in 1506, near the site of the Golden House of the Emperor Nero outside of Rome on the Esquiline Hill. It depicts Laocoön, a priest of Poseidon, and his sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus, being strangled by sea serpents. As described by Virgil in the Aeneid, this was a demonstration of Poseidon’s wrath for Laocoön’s attempt to expose the betrayal of the Greeks and their Trojan Horse. Michelangelo was one of the sculptors sent to the recovery site to check out the find and it was on his recommendation that the purchase was made by Pope Julius II. This sculpture influenced the artists of the Renaissance and you can see this influence in some of Michelangelo’s work, especially in The Dying Slave (which is in The Louvre in Paris).

– The four rooms known as the Stanze of Raphael – where the murals of Raphael adorn the walls in what was once Pope Juluis II’s apartment. Raphael worked here for almost eleven years, but only three of the four rooms were completed before his death in 1520.

– The Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s ceiling and The Last Judgement.

– Other works by painters Fra Angelico, Giotto, Nicolas Poussin and Titian.

– Several pieces by Caravaggio.

Photograph: The Double Stairway within The Vatican

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Gli Musei di Vaticani

Vatican City

Visiting Hours: The hours vary, depending on the sections of the museum that you want to go to. It seems that if you go between 9am and 12pm you should be able to go to both the museums and the chapel. The ticket office is open from 9am – 4pm and the museum closes at 6pm.

Closed: Sundays, except for the last Sunday of each month, unless that falls at Easter, on June 29 (St. Peter and Paul), or on December 25 and 26 (Christmas Holiday). Other closed dates are: January 1, 6; February 11; March 19; May 1; August 14, 15; November 1; and December 8 (Immaculate Conception)

Tickets: Full price: € 15,00; Reduced: € 8,00; Special: € 4,00

Access to the Museums is permitted only to visitors with proper attire: no shorts, miniskirts or capri-style pants, sleeveless shirts or bare shoulders for women and men should wear trousers, not shorts, and shoes, not sandals.

Edited April 3, 2010.

Michelangelo Buonorroti did not consider himself to be a painter. He studied the human form in order to create three dimensional works of art as sculpture. His chosen method of communication was through the art of carving stone. But Michelangelo also lived during one of the most creative times in European Art History and when one lives in such times, and depends on commissions from patrons of the arts to survive, an artist has to go where he is demanded to go. Especially when that patron is a Pope.

Gaining a commission from Pope Julius II is how Michelangelo ended up leaving Florence and going to Rome, to work on a project for which he had absolutely no interest. Michelangelo created the stunning paintings in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel because it was demanded of him by the most powerful man within the reach of the Roman Catholic Church. He was commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1505 to repaint the ceiling of the chapel, but because the Pope went into a focused and strategic campaign to win lands from Venice at that time, Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling was not begun until 1508. Once started he spent the next four years with his days high above the floor on a scaffold, straining his neck and eyes, to paint the ceiling with nine stories from the book of Genesis, depictions of seven Prophets from the Old Testament, five Sibyls, as well as the four corners and eight triangular areas around the room that were also painted.

The paintings on the ceiling, as almost all wall paintings of the time, were done in fresco, a method of painting into fresh wet plaster. To paint the ceiling in this method he had to design and build his own scaffolding. Rather than build the scaffold from the floor up, the scaffold was a wooden platform suspended from brackets along the chapel walls at the height of the windows. This allowed him just enough room to stand and paint the works on the ceiling. Often he worked standing with his head thrown back. Consider working in this way, in this environment, which was often cold and damp or extremely hot, depending on the season, and creating not only the beautiful figures that he painted, but putting them in the correct perspective so that when viewed from the floor, they looked as if they were alive.

Michelangelo is responsible for all of the work done on the ceiling. He drew the plans and the cartoons and rarely let an assistant help him. He complained bitterly over his working conditions and wrote of his struggle to get payment out of a Pope that was rushing him to finish the job.

I myself am quite concerned, for this Pope has not given me a single grosso for a whole year, and I am not asking for any, for my work is not progressing in such a way as to make me think that I deserve anything. This is due to the difficulty of the work, and also to the fact that it is not my profession. — Michelangelo, I, Michelangelo, Sculptor

It is probably the Creation fresco in the center of the ceiling that is the most famous and most reproduced image. This is the image of Adam and God reaching out to touch each other. There are over 300 figures painted on over 5,000 square feet of surface.

The work on the chapel was completed between 1508 and October 31, 1512.

I finished painting the Chapel. The Pope is very satisfied with it. — Michelangelo, I, Michelangelo, Sculptor

Michelangelo also painted The Last Judgement over the altar between 1535 and 1541 which was commissioned by Pope Paul III.

Top Painting: The Creation of Adam, c.1510 (detail) by Michelangelo Buonarroti

Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving. - Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1787 in Rome

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Musei Vaticani e Cappella Sistina/Sistine Chapel
Viale Vaticano – 00165
Visiting Hours: Summer Hours: April 1 til October 31: 8:45 – 16:45; Winter Hours: November 1 til March 31: 8:45 – 13:45
Closed: all Sundays and holidays, except for the last Sunday of the month when the Musei are open with free admission.
Tickets: Full price: € 15,00 (this includes the Vatican Museums); Reduced: € 8,00

Edited April 3, 2010.