Description
An impassioned voyage into history and art, religion and politics; an intense experience of a careful selection of artworks that will help you comprehend the events and the ideas of the time, and meet the popes who commissioned them along with the artists who created them. There are a great many masterpieces to admire; the historical contexts and individual histories of the various artists are numerous and as diverse as their personalities and destinies. Yet with an understanding of these contexts and histories we can rediscover the inspirations and ideals that animated Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and many others. There are also surprising details to discover behind the progress as well as scandals of the time and these too are part of the artworks. Optimizing the time with a well-planned itinerary, this visit will be one to enjoy and remember.

With this tour of 5 hours (plus lunch break), we offer you a possibility to learn and discover much more than is possible with a shorter tour. If someone would have offered to my grandfather a traditional Italian lunch only 30 minutes long, he would have just laughed endlessly. With a 3 hour tour, whatever they say, you will be rushed through vast collections of art and the many masterpieces. For a "once in a lifetime visit", we think you can get (and deserve!) much more than a quick bite.

Historical Context
The Vatican Museums occupy a vast portion of the papal palaces and, in addition to being in and of themselves precious works of architecture, they house many masterpieces in the very locations the popes desired, and for which they created these structures over the centuries. The long history of construction of these palaces and the new Basilica began with the return of the popes to Rome after more than a century of absence from the city. Led by Martin V in 1420, and driven by a desire to bring an end to the degradation of the city whose population had dropped below 20,000 inhabitants (from about one million in the 1st centrury A.D.) and whose former glory had all but vanished, the Church and the powerful Romans initiated the Renovatio Urbis, the renovation of the city. This renovation was only one of many crossing the cities of the Italian Renaissance and bringing significant change to all fields of knowledge, art, and daily life. From the invention of the printing press to the maps that permitted Columbus to cross the ocean and reach America, from the laws of perspective to gun powder, from the techniques that allowed Brunelleschi to construct the dome of the Florence Cathedral and Michelangelo the one at St. Peter's, to the loves of famous prostitutes and courtesans, we're talking about the Renaissance. The Renaissance is a time of renewal and discovery.

The Vatican Museums
After the quick entry into the museums by way of the preferential access we have with our reservation, we go to the Vatican Picture Gallery, one of the less crowded areas of the Vatican Museums. Fortunately it is still off the itinerary of the mass tours, and thus a more direct experience of the art is possible. The Picture Gallery presents a series of masterpieces from the 12th to the 19th centuries in rooms organized in chronological order. Our presentation will help you recognize and understand the changes to art in its style, purpose, and meaning, changes that occurred under the influence of new renaissance ideas.

We will help you see that Medieval developed stylistic forms for expressing the abstractions of their faith and the nature of their holy figures. While a short time later, under the influence of man-centered and material doctrines, Renaissance artists and patrons began to find meaning in the physical world and in the experience of man and therefore the painted figures come to inhabit recognizable landscapes and take on material three-dimensional bodies.

Among the other paintings that we will find in these rooms, there are the museum's only examples of Giotto (the Stefaneschi Triptych), Leonardo da Vinci (the famous St. Gerome), Caravaggio (his innovative Deposition), and the beautiful painting Raphael was completing (the Transfiguration) when he was struck with a terrible fever and died prematurely.

The Vatican Museums also have one of the world's richest collections of Greek and Roman art, thanks to the unbridled passions that, from the Renaissance onward, led the popes to amass ancient artworks. Here we will accompany you in fascinating adventures of discovery, introducing you to works of great beauty like the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, and dozens of others, helping you understand their original meaning and, at times, their secrets. Between the Courtyard of the Pinecone, the Belvedere Courtyard, and the Gallery of the Candelabra, and from the Belvedere Torso to the many statues that merit our attention, the journey will be captivating. The same fascinating journey was made by the men of the Renaissance who gathered around the tables luxuriously set by popes and princes. Between rivers of wine and refined dishes, artists and courtesans, philosophers and cardinals discussed the works of the ancients, the new and surprising finds of ancient statues, and the great undertakings of the day like the construction of the new basilica within the old one.  The Renaissance was a time of passions still capable of the harmony of the circle.

We will also see the sarcophagi of Helen and Costanza, the mother and daughter of the emperor Constantine. Made of red porphyry, they are carved with symbols from Christianity at its origins. The many other works contained within the Gallery of the Maps and the Gallery of the Tapestries will likewise receive the proper attention, as will the history of these sumptuous and sometimes spectacular palaces.

The Raphael Rooms (the Stanze) and the Sistine Chapel vault by Michelangelo will of course represent the high point of our journey and by the time we arrive there, you will be well versed in who these artists were, what they thought, how they lived, what their ideals and passions were, their extravagances and weaknesses. Thus it will be easy to immerse yourself in the figures and the histories painted in these frescoes, to fully understand their meaning and enjoy their beauty. In our presentations we will consider ideas such as what made it possible for sensual and even nude figures to be painted in the pope's chapel, we will tell you of the legends—true and false—of their creation, as for instance the false legend that Michelangelo painted his famous ceiling by himself, a story circulated by people unfamiliar with the technique of fresco and with the letters the artist himself wrote on the subject. We will also discuss the competition between these two geniuses of the Renaissance in the court of the pope Julius II, himself a complex character. Julius was a man of arms and not just a man of faith, capable of terrible excesses of anger and of desolation. The Renaissance was a time of beauty, beauty in body and spirit, where the two were finally united.

Saint Peter's Basilica and the Piazza
Our tour of the Basilica, starting with the history of Peter's crucifixion in the Circus of Nero, will pass through various phases of the diffusion of Christianity and the veneration of the tomb of the apostle until the construction of the first basilica in the 4th century and the growth of the neighborhood traversed by ever growing numbers of pilgrims from all over Europe. We will explain the history of the enormous undertaking to rebuild the original basilica and create the present one. On the orders of Julius II, work was begun in 1506 and during the course of 120 years it involved the plans of great architects such as Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Maderno. Of course we will guide you in the comprehension and emotional enjoyment of the masterpieces inside the basilica, including the bronze canopy over the high altar by Bernini, and the wonderful Pieta' by Michelangelo, and the funerary monument to pope Alexander VII by Bernini, in addition to those objects of more strictly religious veneration such as the medieval statue of St. Peter, venerated for centuries, and the exposed remains of one of the great popes who touched the hearts of the people, John XXIII. We will conclude in the Piazza of St. Peter with an analysis of the Baroque architectural genius of Bernini, capable of extraordinary optical games that multiply the dynamics of the space in front of the Basilica. And finally we will briefly recount the history of the great events, from the elections of the popes to the Jubilees that have for centuries brought thousands and thousands of the faithful here in prayer.

The visit and the works in detail