Today was an early start with heading out the door at 7am. Took the Metro (at rush hour!) to the Ottaviano station to meet our tour guide by the Fontana delle Tiare near St. Peter’s Square. Our tour included:
St. Peter’s Dome Climb to the top of Michelangelo’s Cupola for great views of Rome (304 steps and yes, we climbed them!!!)
A tour of the Vatican Museums
We got to see all the classic and ancient sculptures inside the chambers, hall, and galleries
Inside the Sistine Chapel with a panel-by-panel tour of Michelangelo’s ceiling
Full tour of entire St. Peter’s Basilica covering all the major works of art and sculpture therein
Tour of little-know Papal Sarcophagi beneath St. Peter’s Basilica which is called the “Vatacombs”
The tour was about 5 hours and our guide was AMAZING!!! Her name was Chiara Antonelli and she was playful, knowledgeable, zipped us around groups to get to where we needed to be, and was on top of everything. She remembered all of our names and where we came from. Definitely got 5 stars in our book!
My favorite part was the Sistine Chapel. I could have sat in there all day long. If I could have, I would have laid on the floor and just stared up at the ceiling taking everything in. I got very emotional as I was looking at the works of art by a man that spent 6 years painstakingly working on this masterpiece. It was very surreal. Unfortunately, you cannot take pictures or video inside the chapel, but it is such a sacred area, one can understand why. We took quite a few pictures throughout the rest of the tour. John’s favorites were the Chapel and the Basilica.
After our tour, we headed back closer to our BNB and had a great lunch and spritzes (after all that walking, we deserved it!) and decided to eat dinner in. It will be an early night and we head to the Colosseum tomorrow! Ciao!!!