Vatican Museum

The Vatican Museum is the huge collection of all the art commissioned by Popes since forever. It is housed in what was once the papal palace which itself is hugely impressive. Some of our favorite aspects of the palace were the courtyard with a giant pine cone, the long hall (think banquet hall on the scale of Versailes Hall of Mirrors not a little walking hall) called the map room with carographical representations of all of the regions of Italy, a courtyard full of giant stone bathtubs (they may not actually have been bathtubs), and a hall completely full of tapestries.  This is a picture of a very eclectic ceiling of the Map Room, we decided that the Pope responsible must have invited every famous artist of the day to paint a picture because there is seemingly no connection whatsoever. When we asked someone the real answer was less exciting. The pictures all have something to do with the region of Italy shown in the maps on the walls below them.

The Vatican Museum houses many famous pieces of art like the sculpture of the guy getting eaten by a snake, the mural of the court of the philosophers and the Sistine Chapel.

In addition to these famous art pieces we also saw many not famous ones like an intricate mosaic table of ducks, a statue of a girl saving a chicken from a snake and an enormous (like 4 foot tall enormous) carving of a lama head.






Outside the main museum there were several other museums. We briefly walked past the display of all the soccer balls, jerseys and trophies that players have presented to the Pope. We spent more time in the museum of Pope transportation where our favorite was the Cinderellaesque processional carriage, closely followed by the single issue Pope Ferrari