{"id":893,"date":"2025-10-31T13:12:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trask.co\/wordpress\/?page_id=893"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:50:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:50:53","slug":"the-vatican-museum","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.trask.co\/wordpress\/2025-sabbatical-pics-vids\/sites-around-rome\/the-vatican-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vatican Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, October 30th, my classmates and I rose early and departed at 7am for the Vatican Museums.\u00a0 Unlike other museum visitors, we were treated as if we were patrons of the Museum and permitted access a full hour before the museum was open to the public<\/strong>!\u00a0 Our tour guide, Dr. Liz Lev, led us on a quick tour through the museum as we made our way to the Sistine Chapel.\u00a0 And, when we arrived in the Sistine Chapel (about an hour into our tour, and long about the time the museum was opening to the public), we were the ONLY ONES in the Chapel (apart from the cleaning staff, who were still buffing the floor)!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I’d been in the Sistine Chapel perhaps three times before this, and it was always shoulder-to-shoulder; you couldn’t look down, because you’d only see shoes – so your only option was to look up.\u00a0 Today, however, I was taken by the Cosmatesque style of inlaid marble on the floor.\u00a0 Granted, that is a typical style of flooring used in churches in the 14th and 15th centuries, but I’d never been able to see the floor (due to the the fact that the Sistine Chapel is always overflowing with visitors) until today!\u00a0 (And those the pic to the right isn’t mine, it does accurately depict our experience in the Sistine Chapel \u2192 just us & the guards)<\/p>\n

While we were not allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, Dr. Lev was allowed to speak (normally, tour guides cannot lead tours within the chapel – and silence is regularly requested by the curators).\u00a0 Dr. Lev made a number of key observations as we spent about 20 minutes in the chapel by ourselves:<\/p>\n