Sistine Chapel ceiling
Why this is the first thing I do every time I land in Vatican City.
Read MoreSt. Peter's Basilica dome climb
A closer look at one of Vatican City's most rewarding experiences.
Read MoreBernini's colonnade at dusk
Where to go next once you have seen the headline sights of Vatican City.
Read MoreVatican City covers less than half a square kilometer, making it the smallest sovereign state on earth, and yet it holds some of the densest concentrations of art and religious authority in the world within its walls. I've stood in the Sistine Chapel with my neck craned back at Michelangelo's ceiling, finished in 1512 after four years of work performed largely alone, and I've walked out into St. Peter's Square at dusk when Bernini's colonnades seem to embrace the crowd rather than contain it. The Vatican Museums hold roughly nine miles of galleries, accumulated by popes over five centuries, and getting through even a fraction of it requires strategy rather than wandering. This is a state built entirely around a single institution, and everything within its borders, the guards' Renaissance uniforms included, reflects centuries of deliberate continuity.
Chapter One
The Sistine Chapel and the weight of a ceiling
Michelangelo reportedly resisted the Sistine Chapel commission, considering himself a sculptor rather than a painter, and painted much of the ceiling standing on scaffolding of his own design rather than lying on his back as legend often claims. The finished work, completed in 1512, covers over 5,000 square feet with scenes from Genesis, the Creation of Adam among them, and was followed decades later by his Last Judgment on the altar wall, added after the artist had aged considerably and grown notably darker in outlook. I timed my visit for a late afternoon slot when the crowds thin slightly, giving a few extra minutes to actually look up rather than simply be swept through by the current of other visitors.
“Vatican City proves that a state's size has nothing to do with the weight of what it holds.”
Chapter Two
St. Peter's Basilica and Bernini's embrace
St. Peter's Basilica took over a century to build, involving Bramante, Michelangelo, and Bernini across successive design phases, and stands as the largest church interior in the world, its scale deliberately calibrated to overwhelm on entry. Michelangelo's Pietà, carved when he was in his early twenties, sits behind glass near the entrance, its marble folds impossibly soft for stone. Outside, Bernini's colonnade forms two curved arms around St. Peter's Square, a design intended, in his own words, to embrace visitors like the arms of a mother church. I climbed the dome's narrow final staircase, tilted with the curve of the cupola, to a rooftop view over Rome that makes the basilica's scale suddenly comprehensible from outside as well as in.
The Short List
Do not miss in Vatican City
At a glance
Vatican City in numbers
- Capital
- Vatican City
- Language
- Italian, Latin
- Currency
- Euro (EUR)
- Best time
- April to May, or September to October
Did you know
Vatican City is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population, at roughly 0.49 square kilometers.