Sistina Cappella

The Sistine Chapel was crowded as usual, but we found places to sit, study our guidebooks and gaze at the ceiling and walls with our monocular and binoculars. I am almost too embarrassed to post my poor pix because: a) there is a host of excellent ones at the Vatican Museums site and also all over the web, and b) because the Sistine Chapel has an enforced no pix policy. There are always a few guards patrolling the room, indelicately shushing everyone down to a low roar and shouting "no photos" every few minutes. Always in English. As soon as their backs are turned, the cameras resume until some moron who doesn't know how to turn the flash off blasts the ceiling again.

The famous ceiling frescoes

The one photo everyone gets

The last judgment; I like my last judgments more on the lurid side, so I am not a 
big fan of this one; nor of Michaelangelo generally; the last judgment was done 
many years after the ceiling and after the 1527 Sack of Rome, officially, the end

of the Renaissance, in Italy at least; everyone was in a bad mood; later Popes had 
clothes painted on Michaelangelo's nudes

Up closer; this guy was damned for reading

too many eye charts

Love those grotesque mid-turn poses; Daniel

The Delphic Sibyll, one we like

The side frescoes were done a generation earlier (than Michaelangelo) by 
Botticelli and others; here, the temptations of Christ

Handing over the keys to St. Peter

Side frescoe detail; another Holy Circumcision; yes, I have read David Farley's 
An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest 
Town, actually a very good book

We had lunch at the Sistine Bar; alas, it was Friday, so no 
cheeseburger; also no beer, but the espresso was OK