Il Vaticano

17th April

Big day today as we set off, with every other tourist in Rome, for the Vatican Museum.  We sidestep the myriad touts and assorted sellers of goods of dubious taste and quality, and prebooked tickets allow us to skip the lines which extend around the walls of the Vatican for 200 meters, for 15 minutes before opening time. Later in the day, the lines have extended even further.
…at this point, dear reader, J fell asleep.  Its now 6:30 the next morning and M will take up the story…
And I think that this story starts a bit earlier, when over breakfast our host, Rosanna, told us how the Vatican Museum came to exist. As she explained it, under Italian law, Italian art works and relics cannot leave the country without the permission of the Italian Government. The creation of the Vatican State effectively meant that the entire Vatican collection, accumulated over centuries, had illegally left Italy.  And Mussolini politely requested their return. The compromise finally worked out was that the Vatican got to keep the collection, but was required to open the museum to the Italian people. Which I reckon is a brilliant piece of diplomacy – the Vatican keeps its trinkets, we get to see them, the Vatican turns an asset into a massive income stream, and Rome gets a huge tourist attraction and income stream. Everybody wins!  The conversation made me realise that there is a lot of Italian history I know nothing about, and that the relationship between Church and State in Italy is complicated. More of this later.
Well what can you say about the Vatican Museum? – it’s crowded but so big that the crowds don’t really matter.  The art is magnificent, the buildings themselves are stunning, and the variety of the collection provides something for everyone.  Here are a few weird and wonderful things that caught our collective eye.

Editor's note: I really liked this painting, not because it was painted by Raphael, but because the heads of the angels in the sky looked like balloons. Not a very Christian thought, but it just made me laugh. Mike didn't say that we also saw the collection in the Pinacoteca backwards, just like being with Dr Who, so we started with the Renaissance and worked back to Medieval times. Not very bright of us.

Lunch was takeaway pizza at about 3pm before a change in pace involving a brisk walk round St Peters and up the Passeggeata del Gianicolo to the Garibaldi monument, a nice area of parks and some good views over Rome.
And here we had our second Italian history lesson for the day.  The Garibaldi Monument commemorates the defence of Rome against French troops sent to restore the Pope to power after he had fled a popular uprising for a secular state. Garibaldi and his volunteers eventually lost, but put up a good fight, holding the French for a couple of weeks.  So while we in Oz had gold and bushrangers, the Italians were fighting the Pope and his foreign troops for an independent state.
We descended into Trastevere, an area of Rome with a hip vibe, street art, design studios and fine crafts. The church here was a stunner.

We finished off a wonderful day with a walk after dinner to catch St Peters and the Castel St Angelo after dark.

Editor's note: This blog had taken almost 3 days to write, because of the care and minute attention to detail of the lead author. I had to point out that this is not a refereed paper and that the work rate needs to be improved considerably, or the blogging contract will pass to the second author.