So, time to talk about the actual content of our trip to Italy. This is quite boring for readers, especially regarding very well-known places Italy. Who on earth wants to hear my personal experience taking selfies in front of the Colosseum?
Nobody.
So I'm going to skip all that and you can just safely assume we had a fantastic time.
What I want to focus on is something most people probably didn't experience - the actual history among which we were constantly walking.
Of course people tend to get tour guides and audio guides but I can safely assume most people just take photos and enjoy the pretty architecture and paintings.
In my case, I used my plane journey to listen to Dan Carlin's podcast series 'Death Throes of the Republic', an S-tier, 6-part journey through the struggles and ultimate demise of the Roman empire.
This was just a stunning story, and although every line was highly captivating I did still pass out a few times because I was just generally exhausted. But I always managed to go back and review.
There are scary similarities between the fall of Rome and our current globalised world; Excruciatingly high taxes, extreme inequality, blind greed of the elites, cacophony of war, political backstabbing and instability, over-dependence on debt, populism, protectionism, even problems with mass migration and social cohesion. Are we falling?? Many people think so.
Anyway, with that firmly lodged in my brain, I downloaded my own audio guide app to circumvent paying extortionate fees to rent them out. One of my most brilliant decisions.
Without this audio guide, I would be just as guilty when it came to simply walking past incredible artifacts with little more than a 'oo that looks cool'. with the guide, i'm left with a permanent struggle in my brain to completely remodel my ways and perspectives on life.
I mean, look at these purple box thingies:
These Purple box thingies
These, (found in Vatican City so not technically Italy but whatever) at first, I simply walked past. The room seemed to be a connecting room between two more important rooms, there wasn't much else in there. But then I got updated by the audio guide and, wow.
So, this purple material is called Porphyry, and is pretty much the rarest and most historically important rock in the world. It was found in a single mountain in Egypt, which, now completely mined out, is all you get. That's it. Anything on this planet you find made from this stuff came from that one mountain 2,000 years ago.
To make it even cooler, the skill and technology required to carve such intricate patterns was extremely difficult, and died with the Romans. Once they fizzled out it was another thousand years before anyone else could figure out how to do it.
So what are these box thingies? Sarcophagi, as you maybe guessed. They were built for Helena and Constantina, the mother and daughter of Emperor Constantine in the 300's. One sarcophagus depicts victorious battles against barbarians, while the other is more a peaceful harvesting of grapes for wine.
These two girls alone have deep history behind them, and you can go down a lot of rabbit holes on Wikipedia just learning about them, but suffice it to say, they were open Christians and if I remember right, they were thus exiled because that kind of thing was illegal or whatever at the time. It was Constantine himself that legalised it, which swiftly became popularised, and they ended up both as saints, hence the luxurious burials.
And to think I would have simply walked right by like everybody else, totally unaware!
Not much of a statue...
... to the untrained eye!
This seemingly unimportant statue found in the Vatican museum was a huge inspiration for Michelangelo. The way it represents the twisted, animated, muscular body was somehow unique for the time, and although even then, there were no arms, legs or head, it was enough to carve out the future of Michelangelo's style.
This is further proven by the fact that, in the Sistine Chapel itself, we saw the depiction of Jesus Christ, who Michelangelo deliberately modeled off this very statue.
Some more apparently impressive statues
You may notice, upon closer inspection, much - in fact, I think almost all - off these statues and paintings have had their schlongs broken off.
Learning about the Sistine Chapel (I couldn't take photos there), the idea of the naked human body fell out of favour some centuries later by the religious conservative folk, so I assume the same fate occurred with all these statues. Unfortunate.
These zealots had Michelangelo paint over his original work to hide all the schlongs, as you can see with Jesus above. in protest, Michelangelo added a character on the side wall - his biggest nudity critic. Here he is, depicted as burning in hell as the apocalypse drags him down under, with a snake wrapped around his body - hiding his schlong, of course:
It is sad that everybody else has been censored in the entire chapel. But not much we can do about it now!
I just love how they made the stone here look like soft flesh of a horse's neck being ripped into like it's actual flesh. So good.
Museum Review
There's some way more significant statues but I don't want to spoil it and I'm going on enough already. Suffice it to say, everything has its own vast story to tell, and they all intertwine to tell one greater story.
The Vatican experience here was to be far, far greater than what you'd experience in other museum giants like the British Museum. Here, there's a thousand lifetimes of various stories from around the world. But they're all disconnected. You don't get a sense of... anything, really, other than 'here's a bunch of artifacts we collected'.
Even hearing about them one by one, it's hard to be in awe when one minute you're learning about some ancient greek statue and the next you're looking at some random South American artifact or something from Egypt or Mongolia. The story in the vatican takes you through the mythology, philosophy and theology, and how they changed from Paganism to Christianity over centuries, the empire, the dawn of the Pope and more.
It was indeed very touristy, but by doing it right, extremely enriching regardless. And I mean this regardless of whether you are pro or anti-religious. You can awe at the disgusting greed and inequality that lead to the vast network of priceless items you are walking through which, ultimately, led to their downfall so long ago. You can be flabbergasted by their stupidity, tear-jerked by their tragedies or simply impressed by the world-class art. There's something for everyone and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
A Recommendation
If going in tourist seasons like us (July-August):
Do whatever you can to avoid mid-day at this time of year. Sight see early morning and afternoon-evening. It's bordering 40C every day with barely any A/C anywhere indoors.
Book a hotel as close to all the touristy stuff as possible so you can seamlessly hop back for a shower during lunch time.
Plan ahead like you've never planned ahead before. They release some tickets in single batches a month in advance and re-sellers are on that shit with bots and everything so they sell out quick. Otherwise you'll have to try your luck with expensive third party websites and that kinda sucks.