70. “Skipping the Line”: skipping the art… Vatican City

17 April 2024

Months before arriving in Rome, you might perhaps book an early morning “skip the line” and (hopefully) ‘beat the crowds’ tour of the extensive and wondrous and amazing Vatican Museum collection of ancient and medieval and Renaissance artworks…

You might have hoped that any photos from the museum would be a small, shared indication of the depth and cultural impact of the experience???

The actual “tour” experience, however, is "something else":

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Preamble:

Still slightly ga-ga after a long jetlagged-post-arrival sleep, Sir R (stoic travel companion ) and self navigated our way on the morning-peak-Rome-Metro, emerging north of Vatican City past the fast-food joints, last-minute ticket touts and undocumented refugees flogging rain wear, “African” “art”, selfie-sticks and mobile chargers. Crossing dug-up tram tracks, we were searching for something entitled: “The Tour Guy” (actually several “Gals”) outside the Caffe Vaticano (of dire online reviews for poor food, ugly service and consistent overcharging).

The “beat-the crowd” offer was seemingly just a tad overstated.

On the Vaticano steps there were already about 200 people being wrangled into six numbered groups. Across the road, in the shade of the vast Vatican City wall, milling pre-organised tour groups were being shunted into a “U” shaped footpath queue in order of booked entry times.

Each tour leader came equipped with an extendable-metal-selfie-pole from which hung the flag/scarf/plastic logo, small/stuffed toy; dangling graven image… that their group was expected to follow. Each had a microphone and their clutch of groupies had donned matching coloured plastic receivers with colour-cabled ear pieces.

You have been warned.

Back on the steps, our milling crowd was finding its tour leader, being marshalled and provided with wireless head-set receivers. Despite missing six of our group, we were herded across the road with introductory ear-commentary already rolling relentlessly, to push into the long line of existing groups in order to arrive at Reception in booked order.

So far, so good.

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Prologue:

Our guide-for-the-day commenced the commentary with a large amount of garbled information about how to negotiate Security. We struggled to semi-hear the actual words as her adenoidal cough accompanied by heavy breathing punctuated the endless string of informative details barked in our general direction. Without a pause. For 2+ hours.

We shuffled obediently up the hill then back down the hill towards the public entrance.

At this point, the late group arrived: five adults and a baby in a stroller. Our thoroughly detailed (as much as we could tell through crackling ear-reception) guide then repeated every security and organisational instruction AGAIN, with adenoidal grabs of breath, for the newbies. She handed them individual tickets. Father-of-baby collected them up and held them for the group. Ms Broadcasting-Heavy-Breaths Tour Guide snatched the tickets from him and reallocated them around the group. Father-of-baby performed a Public Sook and refused to do anything much for Mum and Bub in the crowds to come (more broadcast instructions and coughing/sighing as or guide stepped in to direct us towards elevators and to help with stairs). By now we were shuffling past the end of the “unticketed” lines, corralled further down the street, waiting at least another hour for access. They would not have the “benefit” of a guide.

Imagine a heaving airport terminal where the chaos of security is “enhanced” by the need to stay in a random group, following a non-stop-commentating guide waving a selfie-stick with the group’s dangly-icon-thingy, through security scans, bag checks and so on before escalating above all this, towards a courtyard overlooking the dome of St Peters and a replica of “The Fishing Boat of Peter” (baby stroller to lift on the left).

The boat was said to lead believers to salvation. We were being led somewhere else entirely….

Pio Clementine:

And the expedition commenced: the multifarious small-groups were squeezed en-masse into the first of many galleries.  It was an inordinant human Rozelle Interchange of pinchpoint-merged-compression. Each group - members now hopelessly scattered and crushed - had a muttering/barking guide in their collective ear, marching ahead (in no particular order), through narrow stairways, striding into long ornate galleries of vast sculptures, or tapestries, or early Medieval church paintings or, or, or…. in a shuffling, surging blur (with occasional escapes for the baby stroller) and no time allowed to pause or appreciate particular masterworks of the vast collection.

An extended hallway of marble sculptures from Ancient Rome to Michelangelo was mobbed, with all of the appreciation and reflection given to a gallery of bra models in a Myer store if you were racing for the exit. We paused, briefly, to admire the 5 mile post from the Appian Way and the barking/coughing earpieces faded to mottled static. Quick sprint-to-catch-up needed: our guide was out-of range!

Main Galleries:

We elbowed and barged and shouldered and trampled our way through the one-way-traffic melee to keep pace. Only the stroller baby was gurgling: happily undisturbed. In smaller rooms where the traffic was directed into a dervish-like roundabout (there is a protected ancient floor mosaic in the centre of the room), we elected to stand back against one wall to enjoy at least one Raphael in peace while the crowd swarmed the circuit. The determined guides shepherded the tourist lambs through more hallways/stairways/pinch-points: squeezing towards the next wondrous gallery. (Reflecting now about the relative decrepitude and mass-behaviour of the mob… they were not so much shepherding sheep as seemingly herding hogget).

Onward! Onward! The atmospheric noise in one ear was loud crowd hubbub, laughing and shuffling and panting to keep up. In the other was merciless crackling, wheezing racket of our adenoidal ear-barking guide whose red thing-on-a-selfy-stick was somewhere, anywhere, ahead in the flood and surge and sea of bobbing heads. Instructions to “turn to the left” and so on were completely meaningless in the vast, extended scrum.

A rare and welcome moment of near-peace:

There were No Photos (and little speaking) permitted as we in-squeezed from a cramped set of stairs to the dim magnificence of the Sistine Chapel. (Somewhere back in the mists of the morning we’d been loaned explanatory diagrams on Michelangelo’s masterwork to assist interpretation). In the relative quiet - our interminable guide was now whispering into her microphone, with small kitten-coughs from time to time…) we could stand in wonder… for the permitted moments… with 300 close friends.

The impact of Michelangelo’s masterwork was an emotional chest-punch, near-tears, gazing at so much, so many masterpieces….  before inevitably being pushed on and on towards St Peters, with the return of distressing full-volume ear-ranting and spluttering. There’s a Matisse…. There’s a Francis Bacon(!!).. as we jogged past tantalising gallery alcoves to the left…

Outside, on the edge of the vast St Peters Square, back in our small-group-with-baby-in-stroller, in the cleansing sunshine, we were detached from our crackly ear pieces and receivers, and relieved of our spluttering guide: very relieved!

St Peter’s Basilica:

 This is, apparently, where the lovely “skip-the-line” thing actually happens.

The less fortunate Great Unwashed in St Peters Square (deprived of our artistic “experience” which had the cultural sensitivity of being force-marched through the alleyways of a third-rate suburban market, ranted at with semi-aural-comprehension through crackles and adenoidal coughs) were being held back in an extended queue so that we could, now, quietly enter the Basilica, unmolested, unconnected and “unannounced”.

Here the random slow-motion swarm of unguided tourists and pilgrims was one of measured, respectful, gentle wonder at the scale and opulence of Imperial Catholic Rome.

Sir R accepted the invitation to a small 11am mass in the Chapel of Saints Michael and Petronilla. The soft-voiced, slow traipsing-over-marble, people-watching, memorials and sculptures and tombs of popes past continued to be magnificent as we wandered, and wondered. In the distance, a soft, solo female voice soared: a slowly elegant, echoing arrangement of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. All was at peace in St Peters.

Afterwords:

The photos taken during this route-march/tour are quite good, reflecting at least a little of the fine art and architecture. I guess, for most tourists: that is the point of the exercise… The physical and emotional stresses and the bruises of this “experience” will drift off into  distant memory. Perhaps.

But you now know.  And you might choose to be an unguided person to the Vatican  Museum, in the long entry lines. At least then, you’ll be able to pause and give proper regard to masterworks, architecture and outrageous opulence on exhibition.

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