Sistine Chapel

Entrance to the Sistine Chapel
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Rome has been incredible from the time we arrived. Our hotel is very nice and Erin, who is a critic of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is VERY happy, which if you know Erin is a good thing!! On our first morning we met our guide for the city, she was a very nice German art history major who has worked in Rome for many years. We started at the Vatican... there is a corridor which leads into the Sistine Chapel where you can sit in front of a moving screen - there your guide will tell you about the chapel before you enter, which is a good thing because it is so full of people you can hardly move - or hear anything. The ceiling was truly incredible; it illustrates the book of Genesis, the first book of the bible. The walls are painted on one side with depictions from the old testament - the other from the new testament. We felt the most wonderful thing about the chapel was not the ceiling but one of the end walls depicting judgement day. The portrayals of the damned and the saved are very powerful, our guide pointed out that the book of the damned was twice as big as that of the saved - Michelangelo knew his stuff! At the time the fresco was being painted there was a cardinal who was very critical of Michelangelo's work - this mans face ended up as the face of the devil in the painting! The restoration of the ceiling was finished in 1992 but a small square was left in the corner to show how much of the work had been obscured by soot from hundreds of years of candlelight - we were very lucky to see it as it is today! Now there is nothing but natural light allowed in the chapel, except for the occasional camera flash by the oriental tourist! The image rights to the Sistine Chapel belong to the Sony Corporation who financed the restoration.