The Italy Series: Museo Vaticano

Being the tourists that we are, we woke up our second day (yes, we're just on the second day) around 7am, ate our stale-ish nun rolls (staying in a convent), drank our Hawaiian Punch-like juice, and set off into Roman rush-hour to hit up the Vatican Museum.

To sum it up in one word?

 ART!

Oh, and architecture...of course.  

We can't leave out Michelangelo's dome even though we were really there to see his chapel.

We sat there for thirty minutes, craning our necks, overwhelmed.

Which wasn't all that surprising.  First, because the Sistine Chapel just is overwhelming.  But, second, because by the time we got there, we'd walked through four miles of this...

Augustus

Hall of Maps

I've loved this statue ever since I saw it on a college powerpoint.  The Laocoön Group.  Not only because, by that point, I'd become deeply obsessed with Greek mythology (reading Hesiod and Ovid during lunch just for kicks), but also because it's just...it's just such a beautiful piece of art even though it's showing such a horrific moment.  

Like Pliny said, this piece really is a "work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced."

Though, as you may guess, there are a couple Bernini's that may tie... (Apollo and Daphne, anyone?)

Apollo Belvedere

Hall of Maps

And yes, that is Rafael's The School of Athens

Which, I should say, was painted as if the philosophers were all inside St. Peter's Basilica while in-construction.  Which is really cool to look at since that was precisely where we found ourselves after leaving this incredible, gorgeous museum...