Vatican City

Today was the official trip to the Vatican. After a couple lectures on Ground Penetrating Radar and its effect on Archaeology we headed to the Vatican City Museum with the lecturer on Art Restoration we had earlier in the week. Like last year, it was magnificent.

There are pluses and minuses to having a Renaissance Art historian for a tour guide in the Vatican museum; on the one hand, you learn all you could ever want to about tapestries and painting techniques used on frescoes and oil paintings. On the other, any kind of ancient statue or mosaic is rushed passed and never mentioned. Being a fan of ancient Rome, while this focus on the Renaissance was different from last year and mildly interesting the fact we completely skipped half the material to spend more time on the paintings was slightly annoying. I'll definitely want to go back without a tour group at some point in my life. While the extra info is nice, being on no ones schedule but your own will be immensely refreshing. Grace and I followed Professor Rappaport and Lauren back through the museum after we reached the Sistine Chapel to catch up on a few last exhibits before getting into St. Peter's Basilica. Apparently there were whole wings to the museum we never even came into contact with! On the way back through the museum, we came across a long hallway full of jewelry and maps which was...an interesting combination but naturally the Vatican was able to pull it off in style. Afterwards we stumbled into another hall full of early medieval sculptures and paintings which seemed Roman yet were extremely catholic focused. This could easily be chalked up to Rome being a Christian empire in its later years but something definitely seemed different in the design from general Roman fare...From there Grace and I went to St. Peter's Basilica where we spent the better part of an hour just staring. From the statues to the perspective tricks making it seem like the church goes on for miles, the whole experience was truly beyond words.

After that, a couple of us learned of the magical English-speaking paradises in many European cities: Irish Pubs. With a wonderful bar atmosphere and soccer on the televisions it was a welcome reprieve from the educated and the classical. Two plates of nachos were eaten in celebration of the discovery of "Scholoar's Pub" and it was a fantastic night.

This is the beginning of my last few days on this terrible wifi so hopefully picture upload will become a real possibility soon. I have a presentation tomorrow on botany in the Colosseum so wish me luck!