Stato della Città del Vaticano

While we were visiting Rome for four days and three nights, we took the opportunity to include Vatican City in the itinerary as well. Interestingly, Vatican City was the smallest state in the world. With an area of 110 acres, the independent nation state was encircled by a 2 mile border with Rome, Italy and was governed as an absolute monarchy with the pope being its head of the country.

Having said that, the Vatican City had their own currency, stamps, license plates and passports as well. It has also less than 1000 citizens making it having the smallest population in the world. Another significant fact to take note was that the Vatican City was built over the tomb of Saint Peter!

Vatican Museums

We departed from our accommodation as early as possible to avoid the crowd as usual. Fortunately, we had bought tickets from the website instead of queuing for hours on the spot. Do take note that there were two kinds of tickets that you could purchase whereby one allows you to visit Vatican Museums and St Peter's Basilica without needing to exit the museum and reenter the chapel from the front gate which would take hours long to queue by going through a shortcut that connected the both buildings while the other would waste lots of time.

However, the fee for the former ticket would be much more expensive than the latter as you needed to only pay for the Vatican Museum fee (St Peter's Basilica was free for entrance and that explained the ultra long queue). That being said, if you happened to be Asian visiting the Vatican city, it would be somewhat great news as you could sneak into a group of Asian tourists and enter the shortcut without having to pay for the price as the locals cannot really differentiate Asians. I do not know if that were offensive or a good thing to be honest. As expected we arrived to the Vatican and found loads of tourists flooding the area.

It took us quite sometime to get through the security check and we were actually leaving Italy for a day as we passed the borders and had our passports stamped by the staff. We were also told by our friend who was in charged of the itinerary to wear covered shoes with long pants and shirts to avoid being denied assess by the guards in the basilica. First we entered the Vatican Museum which was huge in comparison to every other museums that we had visited in Europe.

It was said that if we were to appreciate each and every art works in the Vatican Museum, it would take years to explore all the items in the building. This was because the Vatican Museums were regarded as having one of the biggest collection of art works in the world. Hence it was important for us to decide to focus on which items when we reached the museum.

For art enthusiasts amongst us, we went to visit the Pinacoteca, which consisted of 18 rooms that portrayed paintings from Medieval age until the 19th century in chronological order. Some of the most significant artists included Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, il Perugino, Caravaggio and the likes. For the sculpture lovers, the Pio Clementino was a must visit section whereby important Greek and Roman masterpieces were kept in the 12 rooms ranging from Gabinetto dell’Apoxyomenos, Octagon Courtyard, Room of Animals, Round Room to Room of the Muses and Gallery of Candelabra.

The Gallery of Geographic Maps was also as interesting in the museums. There were tens of huge carpet-like cloth with magnificent drawings of maps which were mainly of Italy. In addition, there were also museum that contained historic vehicles such as the gorgeous coaches, cars and sedan chairs used by the popes. Raphael's Rooms and Stanza della Segnatura (Roo of Signature) were another attractions of the Vatican Museum.

Last but not least was the eminent Sistine Chapel in the Museum. It was Michelangelo Buonarotti's masterpiece that attracted visitors from all over the world. Michelangelo spent almost 10 years of his life to complete the frescos that covered the vault and the back wall above the altar.

St Peter's Basilica

After spending hours and hours going through all the galleries in the museums, we finally reached the end which was the Sistine Chapel. I was particularly impressed with the drawings and paintings that Michelangelo had done for the entire room especially the one where the human was trying to reach the god. As mesmerising as the art sounded, I actually had quite a sore neck after constantly looking up the ceiling where the masterpiece was drawn.

Here was the tricky part, where you either exit the building on the left or taking the shortcut to reach the St Peter's Basilica on the right. While the guards were checking the tickets occasionally, the  way to sneak into the shortcut path was to join a group of Asian tourists (if you are an Asian) and walked confidently by blending in to the tour group.

Well at least it was a successful attempt for the nine of us to join a Korean group into the St Peter's Basilica. Being one of the world's holiest catholic shrines, this splendid basilica had a lot of amazing histories and attracted pilgrims and tourists from all over the world. There were two levels below the giant cathedral where the first was known as the Vatican Grottoes, a large underground graveyard that contained the tombs of 91 Popes. The second level was the Vatican Necropolis and housed St Peter's Tomb.

One of the most interesting thing that we saw was the Vatican's Swiss Guard that were present in the basilica. The Papal Swiss Guards that were clad in striped blue and gold uniforms were the protector of the Pope. It went way back to 1506 when they were formed and their mission was to protect the Pope at all cost, even if that cost their own lives. In 1527, 189 Papal Swiss Guards managed to avoid the Pope from being slayed by the army of Emperor Charles V. However, 150 of them sacrificed their lives for the noble task.

Vatican Gardens

The Gardens of Vatican City that was located in the west of the Vatican City was actually owned by the Pope. It covered a huge part of the Vatican City and being a private urban gardens, the Vatican Gardens were not accessible by the public and it required a separate tour. Having said that, the gardens were never crowded as only several reservations were accepted each day. It was also regarded as one of the most beautiful gardens in Rome.

After spending quite sometime we left the cathedral and exit Vatican city to go and grab some late lunch around the nearby area. We found a small pizerria with loads of customers so naturally we decided to get some pizzas from the shop. The pizzas were delectable and surprisingly they were piping hot when the staff served the pizzas. There were generous amount of fillings on the pizzas and we were all satisfied by them. 

Basilica di Santa Maria Trastevere

We were too exhausted to visit other basilica anoymore for the day hence we skipped the Basilica di Santa Maria Trastevere. It was a shame as the basilica was also one of the attractions in Rome.

With that, this marked the end of our Europe Trip and this would be the last post for the Europe series as well (if UK were not considered part of Europe) for the time being until I return to this gorgeous continent in the nearest future. That being said, I would post couple of my adventures while I was roaming in the UK. Stick around!

Vatican City Itinerary