No trip to Rome would be complete without a visit to the Vatican. It’s the absolute epicentre of the most powerful religious organisation in world history. And when you realise that Italy has never been what you’d call one of the world’s “super powers”, in this day and age it’s even more amazing that the headquarters of the Catholic Church continues to be where it is.
It’s all a matter of tradition, of course. Because it was the Roman Empire that was really responsible, first for an execution that sparked the creation of the Christian religion, and then once the religion began to take hold several centuries later, for its rapid spread throughout the European world.
And then there was Saint Peter, who after a successful life preaching Jesus’s message, decided to travel to the centre of that great Empire, and also ended up being executed (head down, at his request, since he didn’t think he was worthy of a Christ-like death).
The burial ground for convicts at the time was a place called Mons Vaticanus, and his grave was marked with a simple painted rock. Fellow Christians got the reference (“Peter” comes from the name Jesus bestowed upon him – Petros, Greek for “rock”), but the Romans walked right past. And it’s that rock that eventually became the grand edifice.
The Vatican today is the quintessential city state, a tiny walled place of immense wealth and great power (although oddly it’s protected by Swiss Guards wearing Renaissance-era pantaloons). It contains arguably the greatest frescoes ever painted (Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel), and the largest Christian church in the world.
But get this – the church (St. Peter’s, of course), isn’t a cathedral. A cathedral has to have a bishop, and the bishop of Rome (the Pope) was very long ago assigned a different congregation, St. John Lateran. So St. Peter’s has to make do with being called a basilica instead.
Whatever you call it, it’s truly incomparable, and there have been so many wonderful and well-researched things written about it that I won’t even venture to make the attempt. I’ll just tell you a bit about what happened when I once made a visit to this sacred site.
What I didn’t know on that occasion before starting out (mostly because my lodgings had so many guide-books I found them almost as daunting as the city itself), was that Wednesday was “Pope Day”.
So imagine my surprise when I walked up the Via della Conciliazione and saw, just in front of the steps of St. Peters, a massive crowd. As I got a bit closer, it began to look like the crowd was wearing uniforms of some kind, and when I got closer still I finally realised what was going on.
There were thousands of pilgrims standing and filling the seats leading up to the steps of the basilica, and they all had on yellow baseball hats and orange scarves.
It was as if all the cap-wearing fans at a major league baseball stadium had somehow been magically teleported to Rome, but in so doing had become mixed up in another dimension with a scouting brigade.
They were singing along with what sounded like a contemporary folk artist, a young woman with a clear, kind voice who was accompanying herself on the guitar.
I couldn’t make out the lyrics, but the melody was uplifting and in a major key, and the crowd certainly knew all the words. It was almost like a good old fashioned “happening”; a big hootenanny in an even bigger paved park.
There were also some really large projection screens on either side of the throng. At first the video image was just the whole of the church and the piazza. In fact, given the lack of people it showed in front of the steps it was obvious to anyone but causal observers that it was simply a stock photo, and not a live feed.
But then the screen changed, and even with the fantastic venue, and all the yellow and orange people, you couldn’t help but stare. The camera showed a big dais, with what looked like a tall white pergola up above. And underneath it you could just faintly make out a little man, all dressed in white, sitting in a chair.
He stood up and the camera zoomed in, until his face filled the screen. And at the same time the crowd doffed their hats, all as one, and a sea of fluttering yellow filled the air. The little man was a really big man. He was Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI.
All along the dais there were other men dressed in bright purple and black, and when they all stood up the yellow hats stopped fluttering, as if an electric switch had been pulled.
It was then that the Pope began to talk. I’m still not sure whether he spoke in Italian or Latin, and I probably couldn’t tell the difference anyway. All I know is that it certainly wasn’t German (even though that’s Ratzinger’s native tongue).
And as he went on, something became very apparent – the Holy Pontiff didn’t pontificate! He was very quiet, and almost halting in his delivery, and it was obvious from the close-up on the screen that he was also very aged and perhaps not even in the best of the health. The crowd hung on his every word, but at the same time they were almost as subdued as his voice.
ooOOoo
If you ever do visit the actual St. Peter’s, make sure you take the elevator (!) to the walkway along the bottom edge of the great dome, and then once you’ve been sufficiently awe-struck by peering over and down at the hordes moving purposefully below, take a deep breath (and a lot more) and head up to the outdoor viewing area at the very top.
Even the stairs are worth the effort, since you’re left wondering how they ever managed to build such curving, twisty things. You literally lean right over against the dome itself as you ascend.
Then of course the view of Rome, when you get there, is equal to (and even perhaps better than – but who’s comparing?) the view of Paris from the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.
And who knows, you could get lucky. If it’s right on dusk in the autumn, and you look along the wide curves of the Tiber, you might just focus on a sight that will take your breath away. And it’s all the more phenomenal because it’s high in the air above some of the most famous (and certainly oldest) buildings anywhere.
You’ll make out what looks like smoke in the dimming twilight. But then the smoke will begin to twist and sway, and form itself into patterns like some sort of miniature tornado, changing quickly into a spiral, then dissolving back into a finely-particled cloud.
It’s an absolutely gigantic flock of European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), congregating together in what ornithologists delightfully term a “murmuration”, before settling for the night in the magnificent plane trees that line the banks of Rome’s great river of history. They also look as if they’re perhaps being chased by predators such as falcons or hawks.
Seeing a vortex of birds like this is nothing short of a dance of nature, in all its beauty as well as agony. It’s enough to make you forget for a moment that you’re on the dome of St. Peter’s, looking out over one of the greatest cities in the world.
