Visting the Vatican Museum in Rome with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Vatican Museum in Rome with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We stayed in the less expensive rooms of a nice hotel called the Hotel Venezia in Rome.  Our room was on a courtyard with a window and moderately noisy neighbors.

We went out to buy groceries.  I really liked the Italian bread and cheese by this point in our honeymoon and liked checking out neighborhoods.  When we came back with our groceries, an Italian police car raced down the street.  4 policemen jumped out of the cars holding machine guns.

We stood still and let them go where they were going.  Even though I am from Detroit, I was even a little unnerved to see 4 machine guns on policemen without riot gear or SWAT gear on.

We walked around the block and peeked around the corner to see if the machine guns were gone.  They were, so we went to our hotel and installed groceries.  Then, we set out for a walk.

Scaffolding to clean buildings blackened by the centuries was everywhere, but I still caught glimpses of the column of Marcus Aurelius and the monument to King Victor Emmanuel, the man who reigned over a Unified Italy as we know it.

The monument looks like a wedding cake and is a good landmark when touring around the city.  We almost got hit by one of the many speeding drivers at this monument. 

Crosswalks are few and far between and generally disobeyed in the Holy City.  A stop sign in Rome appears to be just a suggestion, too.

We went through I do not know how many winding streets to get to the Trevi Fountain.  The piazza housing this place is small and was packed with scantily clad, blond women and Italian men with Guy Fawkes’ plastic surgery faces.

Laurent and I tossed coins into the Trevi Fountain, which is supposed to ensure your return to Rome.  From the Trevi Fountain, we walked to the Piazza Novana.

From what I read in our handy Berlitz guide, the Piazza Novana used to be a Roman Stadium for chariot races and was sometimes flooded to make a swimming pool.  Ancient Romans felt the heat, too.

On the way back to the hotel, we spotted the Pantheon, which we planned to visit.  Back at home port, I showered and could not believe all that we had seen on one night.

Plan A the next day was a visit to the Vatican City and Museums.  We appended ourselves to another tour group.  I knew what I wanted to see in the Vatican Museums and played tour guide for Laurent.

Anyone, who has studied Renaissance art history, would recognize Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.  The colors of the newly restored (translation = repainted) Sistine Chapel glimmered in the sunlight. 

I still think Michelangelo is a better sculptor than painter.  The female bodies he painted, for example, are very bulky.  The breasts on the women also have about 12 inches between them, too.

I was happy to see the Laocoön sculpture.  Laocoön was the Trojan priest, who warned the Trojans not to take the Trojan Horse made by the Greeks into the Gates of Troy.  Sea serpents entwined him and his son and took him down into the depths of the ocean once he made the prophecy.

I was happy that this sculpture has not been destroyed despite its antiquity.  I think the priest knew what was coming and ran away with his kids.  The City of Troy did not have a happy ending.

I could not find the majestic statue of Augustus of Primaporta.  A Swiss Guard let us go into a closed off gallery after I saw the statue in profile and asked if I could see it in Italian with the name of the sculpture.

Most Roman emperors have their busts done to portray their faces as weathered soldiers, who earned their positions waging wars for food supplies and defending the kingdom.  The Louvre Museum in Paris (France) is full of busts like these.

The Augustus of Primaporta is a full-body sculpture with Augustus's face portrayed to look like a Greek deity.  He wanted to be venerated like a God and his clothing reflects this.  Augustus was more into fashion than food for his citizenry that would make Rome remain true to its Republican ideals.

His fashionable "armor" has 3-D figures on it.  This is impractical, because it can be torn off to destroy the clothing and open the emperor to attack.  Augustus could still protect himself, but he relied on well-fed supporters to protect him and keep the rabble down and amused with not-so-great food and circus and gladiator games in the Coliseum.

3-D figures means embossed material.  It is like embossed stationery; somewhat of a waste of money when there are more vital issues to take care of in a community.

The Ancient Romans developed cement.  Irrigation canals are built with cement, but you need engineers to build them and maintain them.  You also need a consistent system of laws to administer the irrigation canals and channels.  You also need judges to settle disputes and some form of law enforcement to back up legal decisions. 

(An aside - most of Europe gets one crop out of its fields in a growing season for one year.  The terraced rice fields in Japan and the Philippines get 2 to 3 crops of rice out of their fields in a single growing years with a more labor intensive crop.   Asian civilization is also very advanced like that of ancient Egypt and Rome.)

We stayed in the Vatican Museum Galleries for 5 hours and still did not see the entire collection.  My art history studies at the University of Chicago allowed me to make a list of important works to see, which we did.

We stopped at the Vatican Post Office to buy stamps for postcards for thank-you letters for wedding gifts.  I knew they would forgive the etiquette breach of not sending cards, if they had conversation-item stamps from the smallest country in the world.

The Sovereign Military of Malta is actually supposed to be the smallest country.  It is located in the Vatican, but I could not find it.  The Swiss Guards would not tell me where it was.

In any case, the visit to the Vatican Museums was worth the whole trip to Italy.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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