P6, COS 08!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Hello from Rome again!

Exciting times and whilst I have the oppurtunity to, I better blog!

So I visited the Vatican today. For those of you who don't know what the vatican is, go wikipedia it. in short its actually the smallest independent state in the WORLD. and its ruled by the pope. yes the catholic guy who is like the king of catholicism. but i digress, so its this tiny city in Rome and it has influence and power over most of all of the catholic churches in the world and as christians even protestant, we somehow do get affected by the going ons in the vatican. but i digress, what amazed me more was the visit to the famous Sistine Chapel and the St Peter's Basilica!

The sistine chapel is this place where they hold meetings to elect the new popes but more famously, it is known to house the work of Michelangelo. If you're a budding artist then you should know about Michelangelo, or if you watch teenage mutant ninja turtles, he's one of the famous artists of his time. So he was actually forced to paint this entire roof of the chapel by the Caesar at that time and it turned out to be a really beautiful work of art.

Below is one of his later paitings called the Final judgement where it shows Christ ressurecting people to Heaven and condeming others to Hell. try to see if you can spot the Christ!

Yea its the glowy one in the middle! and well you can see the obvious difference between the Heaven and Hell.

If you look at the big picture, you can see that its actually the shape of the 2 tablets of commandments that Moses brought down!

Cool huh.

And below is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, paintings after paintings after paintings, all scenes from the book of Genesis!

Most of you probably recognize the one in the middle of the roof of God and Adam and that famous touch! Still if you dont, its a good time to start knowing ;)

In fact alot of the paintings actually have alot of Christian or Catholic background to them and you'll find that alot of Bible stories you learn actually become subjects of these painter's arts! For example, David and Goliathe, Christ's death, betrayal etc. All are central themes and subjects that famous artists love to portray and recreate time after time after time. So it was really quite exciting for me to see how all those stories you read in print were represented in paitings in context of the civilisation at that time!

After the Sistine chapel, we went to the St Peter's Basilica. If you don't know what it is, its actually the biggest Church in the WORLD. and by big i mean big.

Thats a view of it, the obelisk is some decoration from outside. The dome is part of the church.

To give you an idea of how big it is, its about the size of (attn Josiah) 1.5 football fields. Yes its THAT big inside. And thats only the chapel without the rest of the little rooms. More impressively was how HIGH it was. It was so high, at the highest point (ie the dome) you can fit the statue of liberty in, and there'll still be some space left!

Huge huge church.

Here's a nice view of the 3 most impt things you can see inside. To the bottom right is a statue of St Peter's. Apparently you gotta touch his right foot to be blessed. Too bad it was closed.

In the middle you can see the huge bronze pavilion thingy that houses where the pope would stand to preach or conduct his ceremonies or whatever. Imagine like our stage, just much more ancient and much much more majestic.

In the background you can see the beautiful altar which is made from pure GOLD. crafted by Bernini himself and its really really really pretty.

Imagine if the fellowship hall looked as majestic with the lights beaming through the windows and what not. Very solemn mood indeed.

And this is the dome from below. Cos i'm too old and too poor to afford to climb all the way up XD

So cheers from Rome and til we meet again, God bless you all!

♥ 5:24 AM