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| Our Guest Blogger at the Vatican |
Editor’s note: The following was written by guest blogger Dr. Carla Melchior. Dr. Melchior is an Italian living between Italy and the United States. She is the principal of Studio Melchior, a leading translation company, and a freelance writer. She is a cancer survivor and is active in fund-raising activities designed to support women with breast cancer in both Europe and the US. Carla is a frequent traveller, but until recently did not include her home country in her sightseeing plans.
Last week my husband and I were in Rome for few days. We’re Italian and, naturally, in love with our country, so we like to visit it as much as we can. However, there are some things we tend to avoid doing because we think they’re a bit too “touristy”. One of these was undoubtedly the tour of the Vatican Museums. The last time we went we were kids. We visit Rome quite often and for some time had wanted to go back to the Vatican Museums to see the Sistine Chapel after its 14-year closure and long-awaited re-opening in 1994. Unfortunately the endless queues to get in had always discouraged us.
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| If you don’t pre-book? A 5 hour wait! |
Then we found Viator. To discover something very close to us, we contacted a company miles away, right on the other side of the world. The tour we chose is called Skip the line: Private Vatican Museums Walking Tour. You may not know just how LONG the line that you skip by buying tickets on Viator actually is. Look here! It can take up to five hours! Our private tour guide, Valeria Pugiotto, was just wonderful, with an exceptional background, very professional, friendly and extremely careful to satisfy our needs. The Vatican Museums are of course fantastic, but they are so immense that it is very easy to get lost and miss the most important masterpieces. There’s no way that you can see everything in one visit. However, having your own private tour guide, a person who understands your preferences, makes a huge difference. You have the impression that you are going to the right place.
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| What happened to the Trevi fountain? |
It’s an anthology of the most important works of eastern history. Masterpieces, harmonious composition and mastery of light and line. Vibrant sense of life. Astonishing technical skills. And very often also provocative sensuality, remote from the sober and restrained Catholic tradition. Then, in other pieces, harmonious sobriety and elegance. And then of course the Sistine Chapel. Faced with a work of this magnitude, a human being feels as though he’s alone. The spell is immediate. You cease to notice the crowd around you. “Thou wonder, and thou beauty and thou terror” as Shelley would say. Or Goethe, who said “Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking”. And when you find yourself in the Sistine Chapel, that’s exactly your sensation.
It was a magnificent experience. Of course Rome is simply unique, maybe the most beautiful city on this planet. The oldest city in the world, but always full of excitement… even in places you’ve seen time and time again over the years, Rome always has a few surprises in store and offers the opportunity to see a sight in a new light, as happened to us when we got to the Trevi Fountain and saw it colored red by a would-be rebel artist, and then restored to its original color two hours later.
Italiani di tutto il mondo, unitevi! Se volete conoscere meglio non solo il mondo ma anche il nostro stesso paese, affidatevi alle mani esperte di Viator.*
Don’t be intimidated by the fact that Viator is not Italian, these guys know our country better than us… You won’t regret it, take the word of us Happy Papals.
–Dr. Carla Melchior
* “Italians of the world, unite! If you want to know better not only the world but also our own country, entrust yourselves to the expert hands of Viator.” Thanks Dr. Melcior, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. And yes, she really did write that line, we aren’t making it up!
Planning a trip? Browse Viator’s Rome tours, including Vatican & Sistine Chapel tours and day trips to Pompeii.
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