Adriatic Trip Day 8: Vatican City and Rome

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

We had an early start today as we set out for one of the highlights of our Italy tour, the Vatican. Of course, this isn’t Italy; Vatican City is a separate nation, located within Rome, with the Pope as its head of state.

Our first stop was the Vatican Museum. We had a wait to enter, but the wait for our tour was nothing like that for those without reservations. As expected, it was pretty crowded.

Our tour began outside, where we viewed exhibits of art from the Sistine Chapel, which were explained to us by our local guide. Michelangelo didn’t consider himself a painter, but one doesn’t say no to the Pope, and he accepted the commission to create the artwork for the ceiling and the wall over the altar of the Chapel. Our guide went through the various pictures on the ceiling, because, as we would find out later, there was no way we could have had it explained to us while actually in the Chapel.

The Vatican Museum displayed additional artwork that is part of its collection. As elsewhere, every possible surface was an artistic masterpiece. Particularly notable were some of the paintings on the ceiling that appeared to be three-dimensional, but were instead expertly shaded flat paintings.

We then entered the Sistine Chapel, which was “wall to wall” people. We had several minutes to admire the artwork, and then met our tour guide at the exit to continue the guided tour.

Our next stop was St. Peter’s Basilica. We entered twice: once through the center door and then through the Holy Door that is open only because it is a jubilee year. Jubilee years occur only every 25 years and hold special significance for Catholics, especially when they make a pilgrimage to the Vatican and walk through the Holy Door that is only open during the Jubilee. This also accounts for some additional crowding throughout.

After a few minutes for souvenir shopping, we re-boarded our bus and returned to the hotel. We had the afternoon to do as we wished, so we grabbed a quick lunch and then walked to a few of Rome’s classic tourist attractions: the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon. All were a quite reasonable walk from our hotel.

When we got to the Steps, we saw a rare sight: they were empty. It turned out they were closed with police tape keeping people out. We found out later that someone had attempted to drive their car down the Steps and got stuck. The car wasn’t evident, but they were still cleaning up the area. There was also a lot of lighting equipment at the bottom of the steps, as though perhaps a movie was about to be filmed, but we never found out about that.

We continued to the Trevi Fountain and took a look at it, but the crowds afforded no opportunity to throw coins in the fountain unless we were willing to wait in a long line. We didn’t feel a strong need to throw coins, so we continued to the Pantheon. Again, there were long lines at the Pantheon, so we decided to admire it from the outside and then return to our hotel via the bank of the Tiber River.

Our farewell dinner was this evening, and we had a last opportunity to chat with our new acquaintances from the tour. Our tour director, Alexa, polled everyone to see who was willing to share contact information; nearly everyone was. Alexa will also follow up with movie recommendations and other interesting information after the tour.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to Italy, Greece, Albania, and Croatia. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.