Rome Day Five: Rain, Lots of Michelangelo, and the Pope

Our final day in Rome and one major landmark remaining: the Vatican Museums, most famous for housing the Sistine Chapel.

Read any guidebook and their one common piece of advice for visiting the Vatican museums is: Don’t visit on the last Sunday of the month. Guess when we chose to visit the Vatican? The last Sunday of the month. It ended up working spectacularly for us, but I’ll explain the reasoning behind the common warning…and why we ignored it.

The lineups for getting into the Vatican Museums are notoriously long; pre-pandemic, about 7 million people visited each year. Typically closed on Sundays, the last Sunday of most months the museums are open and free of charge.

I was delighted by the price tag and started planning our itinerary around that timing. It makes sense that Sunday becomes an especially busy day since a) it’s free, b) it’s open on a Sunday – which ends up happening less than 12 times a year because of holidays – and c) there are no advance tickets, so it can’t “sell” out.

Since there are no advance tickets, you have to queue for entry. After we arrived in Rome and I started investigating the timing more closely, I realized my choice of a Sunday entry might not be ideal. Gates open at 9 am, but it can take hours to get through the lines…and the gates close by 12:30 pm (on these free Sundays the museum closes for the day by 2:30 pm, hours earlier than on weekdays).

In the end, it worked best for us to stick with our original plan, so we headed out with a bit of trepidation on Sunday morning. It was raining, and we opted to take the metro. This was a great choice. Rome has only three metro lines making it one of the smallest subway systems in all of Europe. The main reason? Any underground development inevitably stalls when it runs into archaeological sites. Our hotel was a two-minute walk from the main train station in Rome (Roma Termini); a 10-minute metro ride brought us within 5 minutes of Vatican City. I had pictured St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican Museums as being close geographically, but entry to the museum is actually over 1 km away from the famous basilica.

We arrived around 7:30 am and joined a line that already contained 100s of people. We settled in for a long wait and opted to listen to some Rick Steve audio guides. Periodically the skies would open and rain would pour down. Cue hundreds of umbrellas going up simultaneously. Five minutes later, the rain would stop, rays of sun would peek through, and a choreographed wave of umbrellas would swing down and get put away. Repeat 4-5 times, and that was our waiting experience. Once the gates opened at 9 am, we were at the security checkpoint within 15 minutes. Hooray!

The Vatican Museums are huge (1,400 rooms). We followed Rick Steve’s audio guide and it was fabulous. As usual, I found the museum map to be absolutely useless for navigating (seriously – who designs museum maps?). The audio guide walked us through all the major highlights in an hour, giving specific directions of where to turn and even making suggestions of spots to pause the tour for independent exploration.

Highlights included: the map room, seeing ancient sarcophagi and hieroglyphics (some dating to ~2,000 BC), famous statues that influenced Michelangelo, items from Nero’s palace (~60 AD), and masterpieces by Raphael. Near the museum exit, you finally enter the iconic Sistine Chapel, located in the Apostolic Palace (where the pope lives). We used another Rick Steve audio guide and it provided an excellent overview.

The chapel was built in the 1470’s and hosts papal enclaves (when a new pope is selected) but it is most famous for housing frescos painted by Michelangelo between the early and mid-1500s, including the spark of life (the famous finger touch between God and Adam) and The Last Judgment. I really enjoyed learning details about the painting process – frescoes are plaster painted while it’s still wet – and Michelangelo’s overall creative approach. There is a no-picture policy in place for the Sistine Chapel…*crickets*

It actually took us quite a while to navigate out of the Vatican Museums (remember there are 1,400 rooms and things are constantly being rerouted). We eventually found an exit and walked by 1000s of people queueing for entry. It was almost 12:30 pm, so most of those people were waiting for naught.

We made our way to St. Peter’s Square and arrived just as the pope was scheduled to make his Sunday appearance. It took a few minutes to get oriented and through security, but we managed to hear his entire 15-minute address. It was in Latin or Italian so we understand absolutely nothing of what he said, but it is pretty incredible to be able to say we saw the Pope at his office window one Sunday in Rome!

The original plan had been to take the metro line out to Ostia Antica, a well-preserved ancient ruins site (often compared to Pompeii, minus the tragic volcanic devastation). Alas, the intermittent rain wasn’t ideal for exploring open-air ruins, so we scratched that plan and opted to wander the streets of Rome. Along the way we:

Stopped at Via Margutta, a pedestrian street in Rome made famous by the movie Roman Holiday (it’s where Gregory Peck’s character lives). Apparently, after the movie was released, wealthy people flocked to the area to rent property along this street.

We stopped on a small side street for lunch. John opted for his fourth carbonara while I chose lasagna. Both were, predictably, delicious. We popped by the Spanish Steps for a second look, grabbed a final gelato and headed back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon rest. It felt wonderful to spend an hour relaxing. We packed a bit, I sent some emails and, most importantly, we got off our feet.

Around suppertime, we decided to get some exercise and headed toward Quartiere Coppedè. Although it was only built in the 1920’s, this neighbourhood oozed charm and is famous for its unique architectural elements. We spent a pleasant 20 minutes wandering around the main square before walking back toward our hotel, making a short detour for supper. One last time John opted for a carbonara, and I had my first whole pizza (a Nero; smoked cheese, smoked ham, mozzarella and zucchini). It was € 8.50, huge, and absolutely delicious; I was still full from lunch, so we had the leftovers boxed up for breakfast the following morning. We were back to our hotel in time for an early bedtime and some last-minute packing.

It was sad to reach the end of such a wonderful trip and before I knew it, morning had come. Once again, John’s hotel choice made leaving the city absolutely seamless. I was able to ride his proverbial coattails through the FastTrack security line (glorious), and then we spent a few hours in the lounge. Free food, Wifi and, had I so wished, access to a shower. A cappuccino and the best biscotti I had on our trip to Italy were very much enjoyed.

Then it was time to board our flight and head back to Canada. Ciao, Rome…it was glorious!