Rome, Italy

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The Vatican - Museums and the Sistine Chapel

The Gallery of Maps (in the museum and on the way to the Sistine Chapel)

The Gallery of Maps is a gallery located on the west side of the Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican containing a series of painted topographical maps of Italy based on drawings by friar and geographer Ignazio Danti.

The galley was commissioned in 1580 by Pope Gregory XIII as part of other artistic works commissioned by the Pope to decorate the Vatican. It took Danti three years (1580–1583) to complete the 40 panels of the 120 meter long gallery.

The panels map the entirety of the Italian peninsula in large-scale frescoes, each depicting a region as well as a perspective view of its most prominent city. With the Apennines as a partition, one side depicts the regions surrounded by the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas and the other depicts the regions surrounded by the Adriatic Sea.

Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is a large and renowned chapel of the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City. Originally known as the Cappella Magna, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored it between 1477 and 1480.

Since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected.

The fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescos that decorate the interior, and most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment by Michelangelo. Between 1508 and 1512, under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a masterpiece without precedent that was to change the course of Western art. In a different climate after the Sack of Rome, he returned and between 1535 and 1541, painted The Last Judgement for Popes Clement VII and Paul III.

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The Sistine Chapel was smaller (134 ft long by 44 ft) than I expected and very dark. They did not allow photographs, but with a thousand people squeezed in there and only a few guards to request that you stop taking pictures, I was able to take several discreetly. Because it was very dark and I didn't use any flash, the pics are a bit blurry.