Every year, millions of tourists arrive in the Vatican city-state, and if some of them are interested in the religious part of the visit, then another part is interested in the priceless treasures of the Vatican Museums. Centuries of art and cult collections collected by the Pope are now on display in numerous museums within the Vatican. Beautiful antiques and Renaissance sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, collections of ancient and medieval manuscripts, exquisite interiors of the Papal Palace – all these splendors are presented to the admiring visitors who will encounter a true Renaissance masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel, at the end of the tour route.
Pope Julius II, a humanist, philanthropist and true connoisseur of art, can be considered the founder of the Vatican collections, which eventually formed in a complex of various thematic museums. A small number of antiquities collected by the pope were displayed from time to time to Vatican VIPs. No doubt in 1506, the owner of a vineyard located on a hill in Rome stumbled upon a marble statue on his land and decided to hand it over to the papal residence, and he heard a lot about the excitement of the papal collection. Pope Julius II, on the recommendation of Michelangelo and Giuliano da Sangallo, concluded that it was the famous antique sculpture of the Master of Rhodes, "Laocoön and His Sons", which made this discovery for his collection. Soon, the sculpture was displayed in the courtyard of the Belvedere Palace for everyone to see.
Over time, many popes followed Julius II's example, replenishing the treasures of the Vatican Palace with precious exhibits, but all these priceless collections did not begin to turn into full-fledged museum objects until the 18th century. In October 1757, under the leadership of Benedict XIV, the Christianum Museum was founded, a Christian museum that showcased christian culture and artwork from the first centuries of our time. In the 1770s, an exhibition appeared in the Pio-Clementino Museum named after the two popes who took care of him, Clement XIV Gaganelli and Pius VI. In 1854, Pope Pius IX established the Lateran Museum, whose antique collection became the centerpiece of the exhibition at the Museum of Rapidario Prono at the end of the 20th century. In general, the Vatican Museums complex has grown so rapidly over the centuries that it has more than 50 museums, chapels, galleries and even individual rooms.
The museum was founded in February 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI. Located in 22 rooms, the exhibition is dedicated to Etruscan artifacts found during excavations on Vatican territory. There are Etruscan sarcophagus and urns, parts of the reliefs of the cemetery, terracotta, ivory and glasswork. Since the museum is located in the palace of Pope Innocent VIII, frescoes from the 16th-18th centuries can be seen in the exhibition halls.
- Vatican Painting Gallery
The Pinacotheca opened in October 1932 in a building commissioned by the architect Luca Beltrami to Pope Pius XI. Pinakothek's modern collection includes 460 paintings spread across 18 rooms. The subjects of all canvases are religious themes of the Old and New Testaments. The collection contains works by artists from the 12th to the 19th centuries, including giotto, Fla Angelico, Perugino, Raphael, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Veronese, Caravaggio and other great painters.
- Gregory Egyptian Museum
The museum was founded by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839 on the basis of the early collection of Pope Pius VII. In the museum's 9 halls, artworks from Egyptian civilization (3rd century BC - 3rd century AD) are displayed, as well as discoveries from ancient Mesopotamia and Syria.
- Museum of The Missionary of the Nation
The foundations of this museum were laid in 1925, when Pope Pius XI organized an exhibition dedicated to the cultural and spiritual traditions of different peoples. Today, the museum has about 80,000 exhibits, which are very diverse both in its historical era and in the place of origin (Africa, Asia, Oceania, Australia, etc.). Here, for example, you can see pre-Columbian Indian worship items that were given as gifts to Pope Innocent XII in 1692.
- Pio Clementino Museum
This is an outstanding collection of Greek and Roman sculpture, dating back to the discovery of Laocón in 1506. This sculpture, along with other famous statues (Hermès, Belvedere Apollo, Perseus, etc.), was placed in niches in the courtyard of the Palais Belvedere. In addition, the museum has many other sculpture exhibitions in the Zoological Hall, statue hall, rotunda, bust museum.
- Raphael Station
The four small rooms are filled with paintings by young Raphael from floor to ceiling. In 1508, Pope Julius II ordered frescoes to decorate his new apartment in the Apostles' Palace. Along with Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, Raphael's verses are known as Renaissance masterpieces.
- Borgia apartments
The beautiful room inhabited by Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) at the end of the 15th century is located on the ground floor below Raphael Station. The six halls, each with their own name, are decorated with frescoes and dry paintings of Pinturicchio and his students. Part of the gallery's collection of contemporary religious art is now on display in some rooms.
- Historical Museum
It opened in 1973 at the initiative of Pope Paul VI and is now located in the Apostolic Palace, occupying two wings. The museum's main exhibitions are dedicated to the historical importance of the pope in different eras. Here you can see portraits of all the popes, cartographic materials, personal belongings, heraldic symbols and much more. The second wing of the museum is a rather interesting exhibition showing the pope's various vehicles, from palanquins to decorated carriages and even train carriages. There is also a series of "dad cars" – 20th-century cars on which dads move.
- Map gallery
Located in the Apostolic Palace, it is famous for its 40 huge maps occupying the 120-meter-long gallery walls. In this way, the idea of occupying the property of the Catholic Church of that era and other parts of the country (Venice, Genoa, Sardinia, etc.) was proposed by Pope Gregory XIII at the end of the 16th century. The order was carried out for three years by cartographer Ignazio Danti, who painted not only beautifully the areas but also the landscapes of the main cities.
- Sistine Chapel
This chapel was rebuilt during the reign of Pope Sistus IV from the old church of Magna in the Apostolic Palace and is often considered one of the most important objects in the Vatican Museums complex, for good reason. The Sistine Chapel is usually visited at the end of the tour, and after the endless halls and galleries, marble sculptures and gilded palaces, Michelangelo's ingenious frescoes leave an indelible impression. The most famous Renaissance artists dedicated themselves to painting the interior of the Sistine Chapel, which, from the outside, is a rather modest and inconspicuous building: Botticelli, Perugino, Gilandao, Raphael. Michelangelo Buonarroti even painted the chapel twice, a quarter-century apart, and both times he succeeded in creating monumental works.
Gregorian Etruscan Museum
The frescoes on the ceiling of the church were painted by Michelangelo in 1508-12, during which time he had to work on special hanging scaffolding under the vaults. The central fresco of the church ceiling, known as "Adam's Creation", is one of the most recognizable images in the world. The second time, in 1535-41, the artist was invited to paint the altar walls, and Perugino's paintings were destroyed. The large (200 m2) mural The Last Judgment provoked an attack on the artist, who was accused of immorality and obscenity due to the large number of nudities on the mural. How the work of this illustrious master survived to this day remains a mystery, as in some periods they would destroy the frescoes, and then they hired artists to "cloak" nudes.
Today, the Sistine Chapel, as it did many years ago, is the site of the Cardinal Conference, and the time has come to elect a new pope. On other days, it receives tourists and pilgrims who, again and again, reverently gaze in front of the beauty and magnificence of Michelangelo's frescoes.