I had been so looking forward to the Vatican! Konrad recommended I should reach the museums early to avoid the queue, so I did just that. I was lucky: the queue was only about 100 meters long. It hadn't quite reached the first corner of the vatican wall. When I came out a few hours later, it had passed it and was reaching the next corner.

The museums are immense: I only saw what I really wanted to see, otherwise it would have taken me days. First thing in, I was fooled by a sign that said "Sistine chapel" and followed it, not knowing that I would have to jog through the entire palace to reach it. Twenty minutes later I knew I was getting close when the "no photography" signs began to multiply. The Chapel doesn't disappoint. One can easily spend hours making out every detail and character inside it, and the sheer genius of Michelangelo inspires reverence. I tiptoed out after staring at the Creation of Man for a while, and went straight to the Egyptian Museum. I then did the Etruscan Museum, frustrated by the fact many of the museums and rooms within were closed, but I managed to find (by chance) the Laocoon statue before clearing out.

Right: The exit stairs of the Musei Vaticani.

I was hoping we could have access to the gardens, but tourists were only allowed to step outside on a platform overlooking them: no crossing into the Vatican itself. I can hardly blame them -- I would have forbidden tourists altogether. Despite my disappointment, I was enchanted to spot cedar trees in the garden, right in front of St Peter's dome. Having finished with the Museums, I exited again (it sounds easy, but it took me at least 15 minutes to walk out, though) and followed the wall to St Peter's square.

That's not to demean the basilica though: it is still a most extraordinary piece of art. Just imagine what it could have been if Michelangelo's idea had been respected.

Above: The facade of St Peter's, hiding the Dome.

Right: One of the Vatican's famous Swiss guards.

Right: Inside the basilica, and a sketch of a recurring frieze.

The inside was, as I said, baroquized by Bernini. I can't deny his mastery, just wish he'd practiced it somewhere else. Almost every masterpiece he left in St Peter's comes with its own tale of sorrow. Such is the case with the baldaquin I mentioned earlier, that cost the Pantheon its irreplaceable bronzes. The baldaquin required 11 tons of the metal. Like the dome, like the church, it is the biggest in the world. Beyond the baldaquin, in the apse, is I'm standing inside St Peter's, looking at the apse piece, a stupendous bronze sculpture by Bernini representing the Four Doctors of the Church lifting the throne in the air, below a delicate stained glass window bearing the white dove. The dark bronze doesnt contrast with the background: all the attention is focused on the window. The simplicity of the small stained glass window is a wonderful touch. There is just the dove in Bohemian glass, on a golden background made of alabaster slabs to allow the light to softly suffuse in -- a "plastic representation of the supernatural".
This is when an American woman walked past me to take a look, and then shouted back to her husband "There's nothing to see." Did you wonder why I hate tourists?

Right: The apse piece.

To finish this quick tour of inside of St Peter's, this funny story about Pope Pious VII's memorial: he could not find a good enough Catholic sculptor, and so he turned to a Protestant one (a Dutchman), but warned him that he couldn't sign his name on the monument because of his religion. The sculptor accepted nevertheless. Once it was ready, the great unveiling took place -- and the crowd fell into peals of laughter, because the face of the memorial's Pope figure was not that of Pious VII, it was the sculptor's own portrait!

Satisfied with my tour, there was just one thing left for me to do before taking leave of the Vatican: climbing to the dome.

Above: The scale is impossible to express.

Left: Looking down into the nave from the dome's base.

Above: 15th century "key of honor" in the Treasury Museum.

After a long queue I took a ticket for an elevator ride, thinking there was no point in spending another hour climbing. I was had: the elevator ride only brings you at the level of the ceiling, where you can walk around the inside of the base of the dome. There are 326 more steps of a very claustrophobic climb to reach the very top.

I visited Domus Aurea, Nero's house, in the morning. It must have been incredible, but unfortunately there's not much left of it. In order to preserve the very few traces of frescoes left, they maintain the inside at a temperature of 6¡C.

Nero was so greedy that a Carthagenese fooled him, swearing that he knew a cave filled to the brim with gold. Nero immediately sent a whole fleet to search for it. When it became evident he had been deceived, he had the man killed, but it was too late -- everyone knew by then how naive he had been. Despite the fact his villa was a splendor, his successors rejected his heavy inheritance and buried it under a mound that was meant to be covered with grass and profit to all. This is what it is to this day, and the villa itself was only re-discovered in the 15th century: for the first time painters of the Renaissance were able to discover antique painting (unfortunately the frescoes deteriorated and disappeared within a few years). In the place of the lake that was part of Nero's vista, the Colosseum was built.

Fontana dei Draghi in Civit? Castellana.

Friday April 25

Konrad was on a holiday again and we decided to spend my last two days checking out medieval cities outside of Rome. We found Civit? Castellana on a map, which looked promising and wasn't too far. Off we went.

After 7 or 8 km of trudging through the dullest part of the country, I was ready to assault a driver and make him drive us back to the station from where we could catch the first train back to civilization. Italians just don't take hitchhikers. We stuck our hands out again without much hope, but someone stopped! He turned out to live right outside Civit? Castellana's historical center, which would have taken us another hour or so to reach. When we inquired about a place where we could eat, he invited us over. So it was that we found ourselves in his family house where his sister and her boyfriend were making lunch. We had a fun afternoon with the three. We also found out that C.C. does have a railway station, with a train to Rome, but it's just not listed. Thanking all the gods for the fact we wouldn't have to find a way back to Borghetto, the first thing we did was go and secure a ticket for the evening train, and then we went to finally check out the town. It was a medieval town all right, that hadn't even outgrown the original walls. There was a Dragon Fountain, a wonderful church with intricately wrought mosaic facade (in a style called cosmatesque, consisting of colourful marble motifs), and a much less interesting fort with the worst guided tour on the planet. All in all about half an hour's worth of sights, so we returned to the station and eagrly waited for the train -- an ancestor of all trains, as it were. We were never this happy to be back to civilization...

This was my last day in Italy, and Konrad had arranged for something special: a guided visit of a millenary abbey, including parts of it that weren't open to the public. We met up with a friend of his who lives near the abbey, and waited for the rest of the group and the guide to start the visit.

The abbaye is that of Grottaferrata, unique in the fact it depends directly from the Pope, that its church and monastery are Greek Byzantine Catholic (the only ones in all of Western Europe), and that it is fortified. It was founded by St Nilo, helped by his follower St Bartholomew; they had arrived in this village, the story says, and were praying in the small Roman crypt called Cryptaferrata (the "iron crypt", because of the iron grills on the window) when they had a vision of the Virgin Mary telling them to build a church on this place. This they did, integrating the original crypt as one of the church's chapels. This was the year 1004; the church and monastery are known as Grottaferrata. The church's wooden door is original, a thousand year old next year! Luckily for us, just as we went into the church to visit it, the iconostasis was open (it's an ornate screen that completely hides the altar from the rest of the church in Greek church-types). It was the first time any of the regular visitors ever saw it open, and probably the last time I'll have a glimpse into that part of a Greek church (Konrad: "It's not that you're lucky, you're disgustingly lucky.")