Sistine Chapel

Raphael's Transfiguration at the Vatican Museum

Raphael’s Transfiguration at the Vatican Museum

Of all the interesting places in the Vatican Museum, what is probably the most famous is the Sistine Chapel. I have heard of the Sistine Chapel when I was growing up. The chapel hosts one of the Michelangelo’s most famous works. I have heard of stories where Michelangelo had a scaffold built so that he would be able to reach the ceiling to paint. There were even stories of how he painting lying down on the the scaffold, it seems that this one was not true as he painted standing up. Still, the difficulty of painting on a ceiling is an enormous task in itself, painting properly and beautifully on a ceiling is even worse.

Pinacoteca Vaticana at the Vatican Museum

Pinacoteca Vaticana at the Vatican Museum

The Sistine Chapel is best known as the place where the papal elections are held, called the Papal Conclave. Cardinals gather here and vote for their choice. As you may probably know, the results are then transmitted to the outside world by black smoke – no pope, white smoke – habemus papam, “we have a new pope”. We finally managed to enter the Sistine Chapel. I was expecting a very small room but it turned out to be much larger than I imagined. The walls of the chapel are richly decorated with frescoes but the star of the show is the ceiling. The ceiling is a masterpiece of scenes from the Old Testament starting from the creation of Adam. There were other figures from the Old Testaments such as the prophets.

The ceiling was recently restored as a lot of the colors had already faded. The colors are bright which allows them to be seen from the ground. Everybody was craning their neck to look at the ceiling and I can’t blame them, it is really amazing. Unfortunately, It was not allowed to take photographs of the chapel. I wasn’t sure whether it was because it was considered a holy place or that it was a blanket ban on photography because of people who don’t know how to turn off their flash. I left the chapel disappointed since I didn’t get to sneak in a photo. My friend tried sneaking some photos but I had no idea how it looked like. There are a lot of photos on the internet of the Sistine Chapel though.

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