D6 Jesus was a cross maker

12/18 Sunny all day
Rome, Vaticano

Blinding me his song remains reminding me, he's a bandit and a heartbreaker. Oh but Jesus was a crossmaker.

Today is the day that I close to the god. I have no specific religion, mainly Taoism with my family, but sometimes I’d like to church for praying, but wouldn’t believe any words of the holy Bible. That’s my personal oopinion. Still, I believe that people need to have faith. And sometimes holding a faith can create many beautiful things in the world, like the cathedral, the gospel music or amaing paintings. Most my European friends believe in specific religion, either Catholic or protestants, but people in Asia, especially among youth, we are not that active in religious activities nor do we belongs to any communion. I’d rather all the almighty gods, the Allah, the Jesus or buddha were coming from the other planet, so that they would got the power to rebirth or foreseeing.

We went to Vatican today and spent most of time in Vatican museum and Basilica di San Pietro. The distance between me and god were close.

Basilica di San Pietro

The Vantican museum has a huge collection of Christian relic, usually for a serious visitor, 6 hours might not be enough for the whole museum. There are so many world-heritage treasure on display.

Mummy

I booked an audio guide with me and spent about 2 hours visiting the museum. The first collection exhibition was Egyptian relics, I didn’t know how the ancient Egyptian connected to modern Christianity but after the explanation, I got a little clue.

Balls covered with leaf

Since I wasn’t 100% interested in knowing everything about Christianity, I had my own fun in visiting the museum. I found most of the ancient Roman sculptures were naked, but sometimes they tried to make it up with leaves. The photo up there was an example of how they tried to cover the balls with a small maple leaf. It’s so funny that the artist would even make puberty hair but cover the genitalia/penis.

Beard

Modern days we will take people with beard as non-professional or imformal. But for ancient guys, YOU MUST HAVE BEARD to show yuorself. I’ve never have beard in my life, nor did I use shavers, so that it’s hard to imagine how will I look like if I got beard. I bet that would be sexy.

Muscline

Almost all the people worked out very often so that they wouldn’t have bellies or too much fat on the body. They got abs, biceps and strong pectorals. It seems they spent most of the time exercising or training in the gym.

Upset faces

I don’t know that why their lives were so tough, the frown and felt sad about everything, just like one of the smurfs. Not only in the sculpture but the characters in the paintings were not happy for ages.

Drawings on the ceiling

They tried to decorate every walls or ceilings with mythical stories. Those are the expression of the love to god, but sometimes annoying. Imagine living in a room with dozens of people with vivid expression , they looked at you when you’re reading, eating, taking a damp or something. That’s weird!

The most famous thing in the museum is the Last Judgement in Sistine Chapel. Many people came here just for the famous painting.

The Last Judgment is a fresco by Michelangelo on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It took four years to complete and was executed from 1537 to 1541. Michelangelo began working on it three decades after having finished the ceiling of the chapel.

Last Judgement

But to me, the Creation of Adam was moving. Having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.

Creation of Adam

I am glad that I came here to see the painting with bare eyes. I witnessed the marvelous religious creation of the love of god. I felt joyful.

St. Peter’s Basilica

The next destination was St. Peter’s Basilica, the other world-famous site. The official administration ask every visitor go through the X-ray machine and bag check. They said that coz Vantican is a different “country” :p

Inside temple of St. Peter’s

There were many tourists in the building and every’s taking photos of everything. So did I, the problem is that I didn’t know any stories behind them, for example the magnificent sculptures, if you didn’t know the background story of how the artist made and why they made those sculptures, those things would be something good but meaning nothing.

Roof!

So that I decided to climb to the top of the building, I’ve heard that there will be panoramic views of Rome city, really looking forward to it! To climb the stairs, 5E fee is obligatory and you have to climb almost 400 stairways to the top. That’s exhausted but totally worthy.

Photos from the top

That’s the end of the day and we went to Florence for the next stop. Rome is a nice city to visit tho I spent most of the time doing tourist things, but still, I can feel the city’s old but energetic.

I asked Pier why you just got 2 lines of metro? He answered that the government would like to construct more public transporation, but there are so so many ancient sites in the city so that they gotta dig deeper and deeper so that wouldn’t ruin the base of the sites.