EJ · The Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour

After a pleasant walk you will reach the entrance of the Vatican Museums where the world's most important art collections of all ages are housed.  The Museums of the Vatican occupy part of the palaces built by the popes from the 13th century onward, extended and embellished along the way until the present day.  This visit explores the Gallery of Candelabras, the Gallery of Tapestries, the Library, the Sacred Museum, sections containing hundreds of masterpieces collected over the centuries by the Popes.  The major highlight is a visit to the celebrated Sistine Chapel, the only place where you can admire Michelangelo as a fresco painter.  The Sistine Chapel was constructed by order of Sixtus IV. The sidewalks of the Chapel are covered with frescoes by great Umbrian and Florentine artists who paved the way for the three greatest geniuses of art: Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.  Pope Julius II commissioned the breathtaking ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Michelangelo.  The scenes depicted on the ceiling are meant to represent symbolically the course of human events from the Creation through the Book of Genesis towards the revelation of God the Father and Creator.  Thus Michelangelo depicted the Creation, the Prophets and Sibyls.  Pope Paul III Farnese commissioned the overwhelmingly dramatic The Last Judgment on the wall above the altar to Michelangelo. Because of the incredible paintings, the Sistine Chapel is considered the “Temple of the Italian Renaissance.”