Descending from the dome wasn’t as bad as climbing the dome, even if it’s 323 claustrophobic steps. By the way, I didn’t describe too many items in St. Peter’s Basilica, so let me just highlight a couple of exhibits. On the right side was this statue, the only statue behind a glass.
Michaelangelo sculpted this statue, called Piet?, which means pity, is his only signed work. Unfortunately in 1972, some crazy dude with a hammer ran in and started chopping at the statue, so it’s been behind bulletproof glass ever since.
Of course, being St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the altars marked the spot where St. Peter was crucified.
Speaking of St. Peter, we saw a funky bronze statue of St. Peter. The right toe has been worn out from all the foot-fetishists, and there’s usually a line for kissing the toe. To avoid foot-and-mouth disease, one could also kiss the hand and rub the toe. Today the whole center was sealed off, so it was not possible to pay reverence to Paul.
Speaking of which, this whole Basilica started giving me the creeps about how pagan everything seemed. From the statues, which appeared to be idols, to the altars, to having naked statues inside the Basilica, to the goddesses such as Helena.
Everything just seemed so Greek Mythology, except with Bible character substitution. Anyway…
After this we decended into the truly creepy crypt, where we were greeted by Egyptian sarcophagus.
Oh wait, that’s the pope. Anyway, you see the resemblance. Having the popes being higher than the angels, I suppose it was no wonder they got their altar upon death.
We also passed by the tomb of the newer popes, who no longer got the same distinction but was lined up with lots of picture takers. One of these was the latest Pope John Paul II.
Further into the crypt where the tomb of St. Peter was.
You couldn’t actually see the tomb unless you took a 10 euro tour, booked a week in advance, so this was all we could see.
After this we exited the Basilica and passed by the clowns, I mean, guards.
After this we ventured into the Vatican Museum, where more paganism manifested itself, but I’ll leave that for another blog. 🙂