How to get an incredible view at the Sistine Chapel and other tips for your visit to the Vatican Museums
I hope you had a chance to catch the full first episode of Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums on History Television, or you’ve seen the exclusive web content for this episode. But, just in case you’re looking for more on the Vatican Museums, I’ve got that for you.
Our directors for the episode provided us with some insider tips about what you must see, if you go to the Vatican!
For your visit to the Sistine Chapel:
“Most people look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from the middle of the room, craning their necks to look up to see Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling. Instead, there is a door (not the one people usually enter,) which we learned is the intended entry point for the Chapel. If you stand even just in front of the (usually closed) door, as if you just walked through it, you’ll get an amazing view of the frescos, the way Michelangelo intended!”
- Robert Lang, Director: Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums
“I had the good fortune to be up-close on a scaffold in the Sistine Chapel, but I strongly suggest visitors bring good binoculars so you can see the brush-strokes and detail of the masters’ frescoes in all of the rooms. Seeing them this way gives a very different and intimate impression of Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli and others.”
- Robert Lang, Director: Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums
“Pretty much all of the people lining up to get into the Vatican Museums are planning on heading straight to the Sistine Chapel, so, I find it’s a bit of a stampede to get in there. The tour groups generally head there in the mornings and early afternoons, so the best time to go is just before the museum closes. It’s truly spectacular and absolutely worth it. It’s also fun to see the reaction of the other visitors. Most are just bowled over by the extraordinary beauty.”
- Rebecca Snow, Co-Director: Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums
For your visit to the Raphael Rooms:
“The Raphael Stanze are stunning. Up on the scaffold it was incredible to see just how much detail Raphael and his school would include in the paintings. Even way up near the ceiling so far from the viewer’s eye, the paintings are still so precise and done with such care, precision, and pride.” [Check out a fresco up close that you can clean and restore to life, on our interactive website.]
- Rebecca Snow, Co-Director: Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums
To satisfy your craving for astronomy:
“…Many visitors appear to miss the incredible Pinacoteca, housing over 400 gems of Italian art. During our research we discovered a wonderful series of eight paintings of the planets (as they were then known) by Creti. They were commissioned to convince the Pope in the early 18th Century to support the creation of an astronomical observatory at the Vatican. It seemed to work, because the first Vatican Observatory was built soon after.” [Watch an exclusive web video about the Vatican's interest in astronomy on our interactive episode page.]
- Robert Lang, Director: Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums
For your visit to the Ethnological Museum:
“The Vatican Museums are soon to re-open a totally renovated Missionary Ethnological Museum, which we had the luck to take a quick look at during our filming at the museums. It has a very different feel from the rest of the eight museums. It feels quite modern, and the display areas are immense with huge glass cases everywhere. They are planning on displaying most of their collection, which is enormous and fascinating, from all parts of the world. They took me into the store-rooms and pulled things from shelves from all over the world - Paraguay, Canada, Polynesia - objects brought back by missionaries for hundreds of years. There are incredible artifacts which demonstrate a fusion of Catholicism and all sorts of indigenous beliefs.”
- Rebecca Snow, Co-Director: Museum Secrets: Inside the Vatican Museums
[Tu, main divinity of the pantheon of Mangareva island. From: http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MET/MET_Main.html]
Do you have any insider tips for the Vatican Museums?
What have you seen that blew you away, that you want other museum and history fans to know about?
Let us know by writing a comment below!
