Sightseeing like a geek #2

evilhippie (60)in #travel • 7 years ago

This is the continuation of my tale of a short trip to the eternal city , Rome.

Friday was themed around the antique parts of Rome, so saturday would be the Rennaisance day. We went to the vatican museum around the time when they opened and was met by a 1 hour queue. Not too bad since you can spend an entire day inside and still not be finished. We went through a rather charmless airport like entrance area, and was then finally let loose inside.

There is a route you should follow and as nice little tourist lemmings, we did. The queue never stopped as such, we were more or less walking in a queue for the entire time we were in there , but it was more than made up for by the sheer number of priceless treasures on display.

It was quite overwhelming and to truly appreciate it one should probably split the visit in two or three. it is a great experience but after an hour or so you get saturated with marble statues, wall paintings and gold stucco, at least we did.

I enjoyed most the collections of ancient egyptian treasures brought home by the Roman empire as warloot and taken over by the popes later.

here a collection of Horuses, and then the map gallery. For a geek like me who have been playing pen and paper RPGs for most of my life, it was a fascinating place.

I am pretty sure @steemitadventure would have loved it too.
Of course the sistine chapel was amazing too as was the stanzas by Rafael, but they were also very crowded, which detracts a bit from the experience.
after around 2.5 hours we couldnt ingest more rennaisance and ancient art, even the floors were priceless works of art

so we went out. at that point we were still missing the etruskan treasures, which we had somehow missed, but none of us could even consider going back in.

Instead we queued up (again) for the cathedral of saint Peter. 1.5 hours of queue :-) it was also an amazing sight but after the vatican museums it was almost too much. so we just took a round in there, and skipped going up in the dome.
On the way out I managed to get a few photos of the swiss guards, guarding the entrance to the vatican.

I have always found it totally cool that they are super-hardcore elitesoldiers dressed as circus-performers.
anyways that concluded our sightseeing in Rome. I just want to show you all a few more images

This one show a few of the wallhangers that could be bought everywere
(wallhanger is a condecending expression used by knife and sword geeks regarding sword-like objects which are not real swords , because they can only be used for one thing , to hang on a wall)
The two in the back are , rather over embellished, gladii, then comes sting from LOTR???? and then something which looks like a letter-opener version of a scottich Claymore. at least the helmet looks fairly ok even though it is undoubtably made from very thin mildsteel, and probably wouldnt survive a germannic sword or axe for even one impact.

Then (to remove the bitter dissapointment) some real swords and knives.

This and the following could have been a pair (although I suspect they werent) of rapier and dagger. The dagger has a spring loaded mechanism that if released at the right time may trap the opponents blade long enough for him/her to be unable to parry. These weapons was from the Borgo Sant'Angelo but since it is rennaisance weapons they fitted well here.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as i enjoyed my experience, at least you didn't have to queue up for hours.