The Vatican Museum

We went to the Vatican and it was amazing! We woke up early to get there by 8:30. It was very crowed in the Vatican itself because on Wednesdays the Pope does his blessing. The museum itself is all we were able to really visit today though. It has more art than I could have imagined. It is crazy the history and irreplaceable works in there. We were there all day and I feel like I did not even get to see all of it. I want to go back honestly. No one can do it all in one day and really appreciate it.

The Museum is where the Popes used to live. They turned their homes into this incredible museum. Each Pope would add his own touch. They would try to one up the Pope before them with marble work and elaborate paintings. I am very happy they did this because it just kept getting better and better.

They had two large rooms dedicated just to animals. They had dogs, cows, lions, and so many more. If I was a rich queen I would defiantly get someone to carve a statue of Tibbie and Belle for me. That was one of my favorite rooms.

We walked through all the statues, Neolithic, Egyptian, and Ceramic type pieces and rooms before getting to the paintings. One of my favorite statues was the “Laocoon.” It is interesting because they lost Laocoon’s arm and thought they remade it correctly, but didn’t. They found the original arm around 100 years ago and realized it was wrong. So there are textbooks still that have the wrong positioning of Laocoon’s arm! I just think that is crazy.

I was so happy to see some paintings though after all the statues. I cannot begin to put into words what we saw in just the four Raphael rooms on our walk to the Sistine Chapel. Going through each room seeing the different stories and recognizing the paintings from studying them in a textbook was awesome.

The collection of artist they have is crazy, here are just a few: Caravaggio, Salvador Dali, Matisse, Van Gogh, Piet Mondrian, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Morandi! I never though I would be so blessed to see all those artist in one day!!

I have a lot of pictures from this day, so I just posted them all at the bottom. These are only a few too.