The Vatican Round 2

I returned to the Vatican this past week and as promised early I will give a more in depth post about it now that I've been three times.

So the first time I came with my Archaeology class and we visited the Pio-Clementine and Gregorian Museum. Mainly because they held artifacts from the Etruscan Period and that's what the class was focusing on. There were certainly a lot of cool artifacts and I learned that Museums are named because they are a shrine to the 9 Muses. After the field trip we had to write about an artifact in the Belvedere courtyard and I picked the River God Fountain. The basin is a sarcophagus with war scenes and the god himself is under speculation as to which river he reigns over.

The Second time I went with my family and we went straight to the Sistine Chapel (which I had been at before) and had the most fantastic tour guide of our trip. She called herself our Mamma Bear, and had worked in the Vatican Museums previously. She even called the Pope, Frankie, and said that he would wander the halls sometimes on his own and say "Hi" to workers. We also got the see St. Peter's Basilica and Square which were just massive and wow. So much skill and math went into that church and it's truly impressive.

The third time I went was on Christmas, to St. Peter's Square for the Pope's speech. I can now say that I have seen the Pope! The small white blob, hundreds, maybe thousands of feet away that make up Pope Francis haha.