Wandering Rome

To make it to the Vatican in time for our 8am tour, we left the hotel at around 6:45am. Turns out, unbeknownst to us, this is the peak tourist season for Rome and the Vatican. According to our guide, 30,000 people would go through the museum today. It was crowded, but if you went in with the right attitude, it was fine:

I took a lot of the usual photos, but most of them didn't make it into this post. Here's a painting that is an ode to the main forms of academic learning, philosophy, theology, law, and poetry/music. It's called The School of Athens:

I guess it should surprise no one that this was one of my favorite paintings.

I don't have a photo, but my other favorite was Michelangelo's The Last Judgment. The story goes that Michelangelo was drafted into service to do this piece late in his life. He grudgingly did the work.  It took a long time and painting was not his favorite thing to do. To express his dissatisfaction, his signature image is "Saint Bartholomew below Peter, holding the attribute of his martyrdom, his own skin. The face on this is usually recognized as being a self-portrait of Michelangelo." I love that Michelangelo expressed his displeasure at being coopted into the project in this way, through his art. Also, the statement that St. Bartholomew (figuratively the Church) skinned him (Michelangelo) by drafting him into this project.

It's hard to get a sense of scale of the canopy over the altar in St. Peter's Basilica situated over the tomb of St. Peter. It's huge. The letters visible in the strip high up on the wall behind it are 7 feet tall:

This altar is situated directly below the dome of the basilica:

Here's our guide and a father and son that were in our group as the guide describes the features of the altar:

Vatican City is actually a sovereign nation with its own police/army. They wear very unusual uniforms:

The square in front of the Basilica is huge:

There is an ancient wall that completely encircles Vatican City:

After the Vatican, we hit a few other sites in Rome. The Trevi Fountain had an interesting style:

We had to check the Coliseum off the list:

Obligatory selfie:

I always imagined that the Coliseum was in the urban center of Rome, but there's actually a pleasant amount of green space around the site. We enjoyed walking around there.

All that walking made us hungry. As we headed back to our hotel, we stopped here for dinner:

The best thing about Italy is there are no bad restaurants. This place was great. I have no idea what it was called.