His Holiness Pope Tawadros II Visits the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel
His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, on Wednesday 10 May 2023, and the Church delegation accompanying His Holiness visited the Vatican Museum, which is a few meters away from the Santa Marta House, the residence of His Holiness in the Vatican City.
His Holiness and his companions toured the corridors of the museum and listened to a detailed explanation of its contents and the history of the artifacts in it, as the museum contains 70,000 paintings, sculptures, statues and other artifacts, of which 20,000 are on display.
The visit started from the Apollo Belvedere statue, which is a marble statue and is considered one of the most amazing ancient statues ever, as it was the first piece in the Vatican art collection even before the establishment of the Vatican Museums. It was a favorite statue of Napoleon Bonaparte, and he took it with him to the Louvre, but after his defeat, the statue was returned to the Vatican. Then His Holiness Pope Tawadros II visited the Sala Rotunda room, which is similar to the Pantheon in Paris, but smaller in size ; it was interesting to see the oculus in the ceiling and the ornate roses in the dome, the floor decorated with mosaics dating back to the second century and the Porphyry basin in the center, and it was surprising that these intricate designs were intact and did not lose their colors.
His Holiness Pope Tawadros II also visited the Borgia Apartments, which consisted of six rooms decorated by the Italian painter Pinturicchio, at the request of Pope Alexander VI, painting the frescoes between 1492 and 1494.
This was followed by a visit to the four rooms of Raphael, which are located directly above the Borgia apartments, where Raphael began decorating these rooms in 1508, but he couldn’t finish the job. After Raphael’s death in 1520, his assistants finished the Sala di Costagnino, the last room along with the frescoes for Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. Raphael’s work in these rooms represents the High Renaissance in Rome…
This news was originally published on the website of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Please click here to read the full text.
