Day 227 Wed 30 May 2007 Rome, Italy

Catching a bus to the Vatican we enter St Peter’s Square in time to catch an audience with the Pope who’s on a dais greeting the assemble throng in various different languages. We move on to the entrance to the Vatican Museum where we explore numerous galleries crammed with frescoes, statues, paintings and tapestries including the fabulous Raphael rooms decorated for Pope Julius II in 1508. These include the ‘School of Athens’ depicting the debate between Aristotle and Plato reconciling Christianity, logic and science with some of Raphael’s mates like Leonardo and Michelangelo depicted as philosophers and scholars. Many pictures and statues later we arrive at the Sistine Chapel where we join the crowd with crooked necks gazing at the ceiling and walls decorated by Botticelli, Perugino, Rosselli and Michelangelo who was responsible for the ceiling panels and the end wall Last Judgement. The frescos were restored in 1993 and are amazingly bright and clear.
After a surfeit of art we head back to St Peters with its enormous nave and soaring dome, where the Pope’s conducting a service for visiting nuns. We admire Michelangelo’s Pieta and Bernini’s canopy and tomb of Alexander 9 before catching an open top tour bus around the city back to our hotel where dinner is in the second of the three restaurants in the piazza.