When plans for Rome were starting to be put together, some enterprising soul decided that hey, we could go do a visit for the excavations underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, I thought – how badass – I bet that they don’t allow photography. Well, I was right – so sadly, you’ll have to rely on my awesome writing skills.
I got to the Vatican early and decided to bypass the guided tours and instead, just went straight for the Basilica. I mean, since I knew I’d be crippled without my camera, I figured it was time to go back into the Basilica and shoot like hell. It’s a big difference between a full frame SLR at 3200 ISO instead of the point and shoot I had before. I ran around until the meeting time, and got to meet about a dozen new people who were all in for the birthday. Sweet.
Before we went in, I stowed my bag and we met up with our tour guide – an American seminary student who was on his iPhone while we waited. It was interesting to go “behind the scenes” – behind the gates that were blocked by the Swiss Guards. I felt super awesome, despite that it’s easy to get the tickets provided you planned ahead.
The history of the excavation was pretty cool: Underneath the Basilica lies mausoleums dating from 100-300 AD and the tomb of St. Peter. To call it a complex is an understatement – it was quite the elaborate cemetery with everyone trying to one up each other and have the best mausoleum. Makes sense in a way – if you want to show how awesome you are. Around 326 AD, Emperor Constantine ordered the construction of the old St. Peter’s Basilica over the mausoleum. And in the 1600s, the new St. Peter’s Basilica was built over the top of the old one. So finding the old mausoleums and the details that still remained was pretty slick. I did like learning about the libation holes, whereby on certain days of mourning that you were offered food and drink, so presumably they’d pour them down the holes and your soul would consume them and be refreshed.
The excavations got really underway during World War II, with most of it done in secret so it wouldn’t attract the attention of the Third Reich because holy relics (much like in Indiana Jones) would have been lusted after by the Nazis. So finding St. Peter’s remains would have been a tempting thing to get. However, it was 20 or so years between the finding of the tomb and then confirmation that they found the remains of St. Peter. I can understand that they took their time, simply because you don’t want to go announce major religious things all willy-nilly and then go “my bad.” We were taken by a room that if you squinted you could see the remains in nice orderly boxes along with the mouse that somehow found its way into St. Peter’s remains.
Eventually we were led into the Clementine Chapel, which was pretty amazing. Again, no photos, but seriously slick-looking walls and stuccos. It was back before anyone really cared about money and budget overruns. Amazing ornateness. I just wish I could have taken photos.
There’s also the Graffiti Wall, where faithful went to the tomb of St. Peter and wrote on the wall. There was a degree of concern that it was actually St. Peter’s tomb, but there was a lot of evidence making the case for it. A lot of circumstantial evidence, but hey, I’m sold on it.
Oh, there’s an amazing Flash-based interactive tour of the Necropolis.
The tour let out in the Vatican’s crypt where all of the Popes are buried. It was interesting to see the number of Popes and the varying degrees of ornateness of their tombs. Pope John Paul II’s tomb was pretty plain, but drew a big crowd of people. Again, no photos allowed. I guess that part makes sense.
After that, I followed everyone around the Basilica (sans camera), which was a nice experience so I could actually absorb the atmosphere instead of worry about taking photos. Robert Hicks regaled us with a story about climbing the stairs to the dome and a small group of us said, sure, why the heck not? Every good trip to Europe involves an insane amount of stair climbing so it would be a good way to see the place. To get to the top, you could either take the elevator or “Pole, Pole” and hike up the stairs. Fuck it, we went up the stairs.
The thing that ol’ Robert told us about was the dome and how when you get to the top of the dome that the stairs lean into the curve of the dome and the last few steps require you to go up a tight spiral staircase using a rope to pull yourself up. One of the guys in the group was claustrophobic, so he was out. The first set of stairs was an easy hike, but the legs and knee felt a bit of burning. Awesome. Once we got to the top, we took a quick breather and decided that the 3 euro Cokes looked awfully tasty, but it was time to press on. The stairs that leaned posed a good challenge. At the point where your body was starting to feel a bit light because of the good ol’ Kreb’s Cycle, the stairs started to lean to adhere to the curve of the dome. It was a little disconcerting. The view from the top was equally fun but since it was raining and I was without a camera (damn you Vatican!), I decided to head back down. On a nice sunny day, the view would have been amazing.
Some of the group that went up the stairs took the elevator down, and I didn’t see them go by so I couldn’t have sworn that them. We went back to walking around the Vatican, and even though it was my second visit, I still felt like I was in a weird magical place that was a movie set.
FYI – the Vatican doesn’t offer any sort of passport stamp, so you can’t put anything in your passport to mark that you were there. I thought I was rather ingenious – I bought a postage stamp and put it in the passport next to my San Marino stamp. Hey, why not?
St. Peter’s Basilica was shutting down, and it was time to go back to the apartment, restage and drink beer until we could figure out dinner plans. It was a good way to spend the day and it was just fun to hang out and swap stories.
