Greece & Italy Day 11: St. Peter’s Basilica, Sistine Chapel, and Mamertine Prison – Just your typical day in Rome

This post is from yesterday — internet problems kept me from posting it last night.

Our final day in Italy and we spent most of it in another country altogether – Vatican City. We started the day with an incredible guided tour of the crypt beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. The basilica was built on top of an ancient necropolis (above-ground cemetery) including what is believed to be the tomb of Peter. Interestingly, when they examined the bones inside the tomb, they found a lot of bones but none that seemed to be his. They later discovered that in a niche next to the tomb (it’s a complicated story) there were bones that matched what his would have looked like and they believe they are his bones.

His tomb is under the basilica’s altar and on our tour we got to go underneath and see the back and sides of the tomb. Fascinating stuff. Our guide was a woman who is an art historian and explained everything really well.

At the end of the tour, we passed the tomb of Pope John Paul II and then emerged in the middle of St. Peter’s Basilica – incredibly beautiful and packed with a great many statues and paintings and such. Our usual guide took us on a tour of it, pointing out the balconies where the relics are (with huge associated artistic representations in front). Amazing, fascinating stuff.

Outside of St. Peter's Basilica

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

Inside St. Peter's Basilica 2

Inside St. Peter's Basilica 3

Inside St. Peter's Basilica 4

After touring the basilica, we headed for the Vatican Museum where we grabbed lunch (pizza!), did a 5-minute sprint through the bookstore (we had an impossible time finding it), and then began our tour. A lot of interesting stuff, but of course the highlight was the Sistine Chapel. Absolutely amazing, but unfortunately no photographs were allowed in the Sistine Chapel, so I have nothing to post from in there.

Pizza at the Vatican

Michelangelo's Pieta

Vatican Museum Map Room

After the museum, we zipped on over to the Mamertine Prison, which has been historically considered the place where Paul was imprisoned, but the Catholics have now decided that Peter was also imprisoned there, at the same time as Paul. Whatever. I’ve been somewhat amazed at the degree to which they’ve paired up Peter and Paul here.

Door to Mamertine Prison

I’ve posted a bit on locations – where Paul and Peter were imprisoned, executed, buried, etc. – which I approach with a substantial amount of skepticism (not just these, but all the Israel sites as well). My professor, however, made the case today for them being more accurate than I generally would give them credit for. In many cases, the thinks that early Christians passed on these sites through oral tradition and that when Christianity became official, they simply solidified and publicized what Christians already believed, rather than just picking places at random. He made that point specifically in regards to Peter being buried beneath St. Peter’s Basilica but extended it beyond that as well. A good point, and definitely food for thought (and research).

After Mamertine Prison, we headed over to Trevi Fountain, where Heather and I snagged some more gelato (this time I got chocolate and she got mint chocolate – yum!). After checking out another church, we then hopped on the bus to head back to the hotel for dinner. At that point Heather and I decided to strike out on our own, hopping off the bus at Vatican City. We shot a couple videos in St. Peter’s Square (see Heather’s blog), did some souvenir shopping, ate more pizza and more gelato (chocolate for her and lemon for me), and then walked back to our hotel (only getting lost once).

Trevi Fountain

Gelato at Trevi Fountain

St. Peter's Basilica at night

St. Peter's Basilica at night 2

All in all a fun day. Tomorrow’s Heather’s birthday and we get to celebrate by spending ten hours on a plane flying directly from Rome to DC. Hopefully we’ll recover in time for work on Monday.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts! We had an awesome time!

Hopefully the NCC Discipleship Team will start leading some study tours or pilgrimages to some of these places! We’ll see! I still need to visit Israel and would also love to visit “the other holy land” where Paul traveled extensively – Turkey.