theatre of the absurd: Italy, part XVII - Rome (vii): Vatican, part II, St Peter's Basilica, the Tiber River and the Castel Sant'Angelo (Mausoleum of Hadrian)

The Dome of St Peter's Basilica

More Vatican. It was surprisingly large, one huge catacomb of chapels upon chapels upon chapels, each of them finished with the utmost care to detail. Lots of Raphael's works, he who died too young. I could sense everyone's impatience, though; this is all very nice, but where is the Sistine? And it was almost as if the Vatican knew what we were thinking, for in every corner there was a sign that said something to the effect of, "The Sistine is in that direction," which gave the erroneous impression that it was the next chapel. And of course it wasn't, and it took the patient tourist about 90 minutes of walking and skimming through all the treasures of the Vatican, to finally arrive at the Sistine.

I must have seen about 30 of these signs

We weren't supposed to take pictures of the Sistine, although a lot of people were doing it anyway, but I did see the rather burly patrol officers ask more than one person to put away their cameras, and the last thing I wanted was to be apprehended and thrown out of the Vatican, so I contented myself with trying to locate the Creation of David. I think most people, myself included, were under the impression that the Creation is one single mural of that famous portrait of David and God, but in truth that was only one very small scene out of an entire, vast tapestry of paintings that covered the entire ceiling of the Vatican, and it took everyone ages to finally locate David, which was... really quite small, and extremely hard to find. It was rather like trying to play the Michelangelo version of Where's Wally, and it was a little bit funny, everyone squinting hard at the ceiling and complaining loudly that they couldn't find him, and ignoring all the other magnificent works of art that Michelangelo had produced.

After the Sistine I asked one of the officers if I could access St Peter's Basilica from there, just as the lady in the piazza had advised, and he directed me down a rather discreet-looking passageway. I happily made my way down there, and then walked out into the magnificent Basilica itself.

The corridor off the main door of the Basilica

The pictures I have here don't do it justice. You have to be there, to see it, to feel its majesty, its vastness and splendour and grandness and holiness. It was the most perfect cathedral I had ever seen in my whole life, in a lifetime of seeing many cathedrals and churches and chapels, and every inch of it was perfect. A few months later on from the day I beheld St Peter's Basilica, I visited the Hagia Sophia, the eastern counterpart to St Peter's Basilica, and the Hagia, whilst still beautiful, was... ruined. It had been ruined by fire, by invasions, by the Ottoman Turks, and ultimately converted into a mosque, but you could see the shadow of what it had once been, and I remember standing amongst the Ayia Sofia and looking up at its damaged facade and the vast gilt letters of the Koran that had been pasted upon the likenesses of the Orthodox saints and Byzantine emperors, and thinking of St Peter's Basilica, which had endured in the Eternal City, unlike the Ayia Sofia.

After this I walked out - it was still raining, and there were still endless Indian/Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan hawkers trying to shove umbrellas under my nose and bully me into buying their goods - and I ignored them all, and passed out of the piazza, and walked towards the river, in the direction of the Mausoleum of Hadrian, or the Castel Sant'Angelo. I walked around a bit, watched the violinist there playing, decided that I preferred the Pantheon fiddler, and looked at the entry tickets (18.50 euro) and decided that Hadrian could wait for another day.