Vatican City

Today we visited the Vatican City, which is its own tiny country!

Here is what Jonathan Ennis has to say:

“Have you ever watched the reality tv show ‘hoarders’? Well that was what walking through the first art gallery in the Vatican reminded me of, but instead of the hoarders accumulating large piles of things in their houses, the religious rulers had accumulated more wealth in art than many small countries did. I saw incredible works of art, paintings, statues, and frescoes. Many of them were priceless and had been created by famous artists such as Michelangelo, and Raphael. As a group we moved through many galleries and saw art the church has picked from many different eras, we saw everything from statues made in Roman times, to modern sculptures from the 1990’s. Everything about the 44 hectares of land called the Vatican that we saw was the embodiment of beauty. The art, the architecture, the stunning view from the top of St. Peters Basilica. It was incredible, it was beautiful beyond words, and it was decadent beyond anything I have ever seen.”

Ari Nagle says:

“Today was probably the busiest and biggest day because we visited the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica. At the Vatican museum, we saw the gradual shift from medieval to renaissance art in the huge galleries. The most amazing gallery in my opinion was the Raphael room. There, we got to see the School of Athens up close. Afterwards, we visited the Sistine chapel, which was painted by Michelangelo. The immensity was overwhelming because the whole chapel is painted on every side in such great detail. After that, we moved on to St. Peter’s Basilica. This was very exciting because we climbed up to the top of the dome and walked around the side of it. The letters around the dome are six feet tall! We heard some interesting stories from our guide Megan in the Vatican. Then we went to dinner and had some free time to walk around. Today was very busy, but we got to see lots of famous things in detail.”

We ended the day eating delicious gelato and traditional Italian cuisines.