Oh, the Vatican Museum: as frustrating and overcrowded as I remember it, and yet just as astonishingly overwhelming as it was the first time. I'll be blunt. I don't like it. For all the gems it has in there, from the room of ancient animals to the Laocoon to the absolutely stunning Prima Porta statue of Augustus, somehow the Museum feels overrated. Sure, maybe it's worth it to go during whatever kind of winter Italy has, when the tourists aren't swarming around the rooms in hoards of ramming elbows and overheated bodies, but in the beginning of June when the weather is eighty degrees and the line to get into the Vatican stretches about three blocks around, I would have rather passed on the opportunity. It sounds terrible and ungrateful. Hell, it sounds spoiled to say. "Oh, I went to the Vatican Museum, and I've seen better" isn't exactly what comes up in casual conversation with people (even if it's true). And in all honesty, the museum is beautiful. It has incredible exhibits, much like the Met in NYC, with cases filled with gorgeous pottery and jewelry, Egyptian relics, and statues of the gods and prominent historical men—enough to send a Classicist into ecstasy. But it is miserable. Horribly unorganized, confusing to navigate, and so crowded that you could start the trip out as jovial and high-spirited as freakin' Santa Claus and end up in the Sistine Chapel a tired, sweating, swearing misanthrope.
The problem with the Vatican Museum is that it herds you along like you're cattle. Forget spending half in hour in front of your favorite relic (let's say, for instance, the Prima freaking Porta). That's not happening. Instead, you're likely to catch the room fairly uncrowded in certain spots for scarce moments only—a nice little pocket of space interrupted every so often by a wayward tourist—so as to get pictures and stand in wonder for a minute or two until forced to move on. And maybe you can catch a glimpse of it on your way out of the room, but once you reach the stairs—and I mean any stairs—you're sucked up into the crowd with no hope of turning back. The museum has a very straight-forward goal: get you to the chapel, and then to the gift shops. So even if you don't know where you're going, you'll find yourself being squeezed into a new room soon enough—provided that it's not corded off for some inexplicable reason—nearly on the heels of the person in front of you as you try to shuffle your way forward and maneuver picture-taking at the same time. Some rooms aren't bad. The first few, lined to the ceiling with sculptures, statues, and fragments (and that is not even hyperbolic; every room is brimming with artifacts, a fact that is impressive, pompous, and overall disappointing), don't feel too hectic. There are people, a great many of them, but you can still put your foot down without entangling your ankles with someone you'd rather not. However, the further you go into the museum, the denser the people get—which is an obvious result anyway, but in the Vatican Museum it's like going from stumbling upon a few bees hovering around flowers to being thrown into the entire freaking hive. There's one room, a circular room not unlike a rotary, that is the most frustrating room in the history of architecture. A huge crowd bottlenecks by the double doors, and because every single person wants to take a picture of the statues that line the walls your progress onward becomes pretty stagnant. I didn't even worry about taking pictures at that point. I just walked through the shortcut security opened up, cutting my losses to save my sanity. My patience, however, had long since fallen victim.
Perhaps the most overrated sight of all in the Vatican Museum, though, is the Sistine Chapel. And no, I'm no Philistine. The art is phenomenal. The side wall when you first walk in (and immediately keep your back to because your eyes are on the ceiling) is stunning; absolutely breathtaking; so full of color and emotion and movement, not talked about at all because of the over-hyped scene of God and Adam. But it is damn frustrating, and it honestly isn't worth the wait. Not because the art is somehow inferior to your expectations. Yes, there is far too much to see in one viewing, and yes, the depiction of God and Adam kind of slaps you in the face when you realize it is merely a panel in the scheme of the many panels, not some wide blue ceiling with only God and Adam inhabiting it. I was there before, and I was absolutely miserable, offended, pissed off, when I realized that I had had to endure so much pushing and shoving to get there.
The problem with the Vatican Museum is that it herds you along like you're cattle. Forget spending half in hour in front of your favorite relic (let's say, for instance, the Prima freaking Porta). That's not happening. Instead, you're likely to catch the room fairly uncrowded in certain spots for scarce moments only—a nice little pocket of space interrupted every so often by a wayward tourist—so as to get pictures and stand in wonder for a minute or two until forced to move on. And maybe you can catch a glimpse of it on your way out of the room, but once you reach the stairs—and I mean any stairs—you're sucked up into the crowd with no hope of turning back. The museum has a very straight-forward goal: get you to the chapel, and then to the gift shops. So even if you don't know where you're going, you'll find yourself being squeezed into a new room soon enough—provided that it's not corded off for some inexplicable reason—nearly on the heels of the person in front of you as you try to shuffle your way forward and maneuver picture-taking at the same time. Some rooms aren't bad. The first few, lined to the ceiling with sculptures, statues, and fragments (and that is not even hyperbolic; every room is brimming with artifacts, a fact that is impressive, pompous, and overall disappointing), don't feel too hectic. There are people, a great many of them, but you can still put your foot down without entangling your ankles with someone you'd rather not. However, the further you go into the museum, the denser the people get—which is an obvious result anyway, but in the Vatican Museum it's like going from stumbling upon a few bees hovering around flowers to being thrown into the entire freaking hive. There's one room, a circular room not unlike a rotary, that is the most frustrating room in the history of architecture. A huge crowd bottlenecks by the double doors, and because every single person wants to take a picture of the statues that line the walls your progress onward becomes pretty stagnant. I didn't even worry about taking pictures at that point. I just walked through the shortcut security opened up, cutting my losses to save my sanity. My patience, however, had long since fallen victim.
Perhaps the most overrated sight of all in the Vatican Museum, though, is the Sistine Chapel. And no, I'm no Philistine. The art is phenomenal. The side wall when you first walk in (and immediately keep your back to because your eyes are on the ceiling) is stunning; absolutely breathtaking; so full of color and emotion and movement, not talked about at all because of the over-hyped scene of God and Adam. But it is damn frustrating, and it honestly isn't worth the wait. Not because the art is somehow inferior to your expectations. Yes, there is far too much to see in one viewing, and yes, the depiction of God and Adam kind of slaps you in the face when you realize it is merely a panel in the scheme of the many panels, not some wide blue ceiling with only God and Adam inhabiting it. I was there before, and I was absolutely miserable, offended, pissed off, when I realized that I had had to endure so much pushing and shoving to get there.
And that's why it's not worth it—because if you go in the height of tourist season, and you have to deal with all the ignorant and disrespectful people leaning on artworks and taking pictures when the signs clearly forbid cameras, you'll hate it. You'll never want to go back. People have said as much. And honestly, I don't know if I will go back again, if it means waiting in the three-block-long line and having to wedge my way through doorway after doorway without being able to stop and just relax for a minute, appreciating the ceiling art of all the rooms that get neglected on the interminable pathway to the chapel. Going a second time has given me a new perspective, because I knew what I didn't before, and I couldn't be disappointed. Sure, I was sweating in jeans and dizzy with hunger, but I wouldn't have minded lingering in the chapel this time: find some pocket somewhere in the sea of flashing cameras and obnoxious tour groups, so that I could just tilt my head back and stare for a while. Honestly, it's disappointing how many people just want to get in, see the ceiling, and leave in five minutes, because they're so exhausted from the ridiculous hike to the chapel. It shouldn't be that way. The museum shouldn't ruin art for people, but ultimately it does. So if I ever come back, and if I ever have the chance to experience a blissfully uncrowded walk to the chapel, I'm making a promise to myself that I'll enjoy it—appreciate all the nuances that I haven't been able to see. Because as it stands right now, the Vatican Museum has yet to redeem itself to me. And no amount of (stolen) Prima Porta can ameliorate that.
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