Visiting the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel

Through several movies I've become accustomed to hearing about the Sistine Chapel. Seeing it once in their life seems to be the dream of many people fascinated with art. Well art is certainly one thing Rome has a lot. Even thou I've been in Rome twice before this longer stay, I never had visited the Sistine Chapel in Vatican Museum. Sure I had been in Vatican several times, and in St. Peters Basilica as well several times, but never in the Vatican Museum. So now finally I went for a visit.

Since I knew there is normally a long queue inside the Museum, we got our tickets beforehand from the Internet. Sure there are other ways to get pass the line, that is if you take one of the guided tours that are offered everywhere, but especially outside the St. Peters Basilica (or on the road from the Basilica to the Museum. Good to know is that you need to be at the Museum early in the morning, since at least winter time the Museum closes already at 13.45.

Since the Museum is huge it will take several hours just to WALK it through. Yes WALK IT THROUGH, it is quite impossible to see it all. The amount of treasures they have in the Museum is indescribable. You cannot imagine it all before you have seen it. How the church came to have such riches is of cause another story. It does make you wander is it justified for the Vatican to have such riches when so many people – even in Rome – are living in such poor conditions. And when you consider that the riches were accumulated in times when people were even more poor than today. Many of the churches in Rome were financed originally by robbing the poor, yes selling certificates for poor people so that they could buy off from hell one of their dead-loved-one. And at the same time these unfortunate poor ones could not afford to feed their children. This is exactly what Martin Luther (that time Roman Catholic Priest) was shocked about and started his reformation. The reason why the Northern Europe is mainly Lutheran nowadays. With this money many of the Churches were build and money accumulated to the Church. Of cause many of the items in the possession of the church were also acquired through wars and “taxation”. So you could say that seeing the riches in Vatican just gives an additional proof of these methods being used earlier.

The Sistine Chapel has an interesting history. Not only did the painting of the Chapel took many years to paint (and Michelangelo was painting lying down and his arm raised up), but the paintings themselves were very controversial. Not only were there many naked persons on the paintings. So many that it was considered shocking when the Chapel was opened. The naked persons almost got the whole Chapel being demolished. But one of the popes saw the value of the Chapel. The many naked persons were given “given some clothing”, so their private parts were painted over.

I must say the Chapel is bigger than I thought it would be. Quite much bigger. Well maybe that was good since the whole Chapel was full of people. Some of the paintings were easily identified, but many were non-Biblical, but had images of pagan “persons”. Quite fitting when you think that the Chapel is in the Vatican, the place where so many pagan statues, paintings and artwork have their home. How fitting to have the Sistine Chapel - “Mother of all the chapels” to be the home of pictures of pagan features. Was the Chapel worth seeing? Well at least for the sake of it's history, yes it was very interesting. It did brought again the point how paganism and “Christianity” has mixed in the Ancient Rome. This mixture still exists of cause today!

One thing that Vatican is trying hard to conceal is the name of God in the St. Peters Basilica. Name Jehovah (or tetragramaton JHWH) appear twice in the St. Peters Basilica. You will find it from the last-right-corner in the Basilica, where you see white statue with an Angel, with a “star” in it's head. On the head you'll see the JHWH Hebrew letters, which means Jehovah. The second place is on the left-side where you'll see a big painting of the high-priest. The high-priest has the tetragramaton JHWH again in his head. Funny thing is that Vatican istrying to hide these two places, by using a bad lighting and walls to restrict the access to these areas. The tetragramaton is also in the Vatican Museum in a ceiling-painting of Moses. Why is Vatican so adamant of hiding God's name? Rome is definitely a place where God's name is prominently present, no matter how much Vatican has tried to destroy the evidence of God's name.