← All articles · Vatican City · 17 March 2016

Vatican City: The Gallery of Maps, the Sistine ceiling and the neck ache that follows

Vatican City in March 2016: the queue at the museum doors, the pine cone courtyard, the Gallery of Maps, the Sistine ceiling and St Peter's at midday.

The smallest country in the world, and it took us most of a March 2016 morning to cross it. We joined the queue outside the museum doors just before ten, and came out into St Peter's Square just after twelve, having walked past roughly a millennium of things people made to be looked at.

Getting in

Inga and Dileep taking a selfie in sunglasses below the carved stone doorway of the Vatican Museums, marked Musei Vaticani, with the crowd barriers behind them — Musei Vaticani, carved above the door, with the queue snaking along the wall behind us.

A wide paved museum courtyard in bright sun, edged with tall glazed gallery windows and full of visitors — Out into the first courtyard, low March sun and glass galleries all the way round. A 360 photo: drag to look in any direction.

A museum terrace under a large umbrella pine, with a long line of visitors waiting along the wall and the dome of St Peter's beyond — An umbrella pine, a terrace, and a queue that went round the corner and kept going. A 360 photo: drag to look in any direction.

The courtyards

Dileep in sunglasses standing in front of a giant bronze pine cone fountain flanked by two bronze peacocks — A four metre bronze pine cone with a peacock on either side. Nobody explains it, and honestly that's better.

The huge curved niche of the Vatican courtyard in yellow stone, with the bronze pine cone standing at the foot of the steps and crowds in front — The whole niche it sits in, which is the size of a decent cathedral apse on its own.

A large bronze sphere sculpture with a broken outer shell revealing a second cracked sphere of gears inside, standing in a courtyard — A bronze sphere cracked open to show another one inside. The oldest thing here is about two thousand years old, and then there's this.

Ceilings, and the ache in your neck

You spend the museums looking up. Nobody warns you that the highlight reel is almost entirely overhead.

The Gallery of Maps, a long corridor with a heavily gilded painted vault and huge painted maps on blue backgrounds down both walls, filled with visitors — The Gallery of Maps: painted maps of Italy down both walls and a gold ceiling that refuses to stop.

Inga and Dileep taking a selfie in the Gallery of Maps with the gilded vault and blue map panels stretching away behind them — Proof we were there, and proof of how slowly that corridor moves.

A gallery with a barrel vault covered in gold and painted panels, tapestries on the walls and a dense crowd of visitors below — Another hall, another gilded barrel vault, and everyone below it walking with their head tipped back.

A gallery hung with a vast battle painting, framed portraits along the side walls and a crowd of visitors packed in front of it — A single painting taking up an entire wall, and the room packed shoulder to shoulder in front of it. A 360 photo: drag to look in any direction.

An octagonal coffered ceiling painted with figures and a coat of arms, next to a wall fresco crowded with saints — Coffered, painted, gilded, and that's just the corner of one room.

Inga and Dileep looking up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with the Creation of Adam visible directly above them — The Sistine Chapel, with the famous pair of fingers almost touching just above our heads. We're not going to pretend this is a good photograph.

St Peter's

Inga smiling in the nave of St Peter's Basilica with the bronze baldachin under the dome behind her and crowds on the marble floor — The twisted bronze columns of the baldachin behind her look small. They're about the height of a house.

The side aisles and nave of St Peter's Basilica seen in every direction, with gilded vaults, marble statues and visitors crossing the patterned floor — Turn all the way round in here and the building just keeps on being enormous. A 360 photo: drag to look in any direction.

Inga and Dileep taking a selfie in St Peter's Square with the obelisk, the basilica front and the colonnade behind them — Out in the square, obelisk over one shoulder, colonnade over the other.

Inga in St Peter's Square with the Egyptian obelisk, the front of the basilica and its dome behind her under a blue sky — Midday, blue sky, and a country you can cross before lunch.

Cross the river and you're back in Rome, which is where we spent the rest of the trip.