The Rest of the Vatican

The Vatican Museums encompass a dozen collections; beyond the most famous are sections devoted to Egyptian, Etruscan, and Ethnological holdings, early and modern religious art, plus the Vatican Gardens

Collection of Modern Religious Art

The Vatican Map gallery. (Photo by JoJan)

To many this is the least interesting part of the Vatican: 500 pieces of 20th-century religious painting and sculpture—some of it quite good; much of it schlock—gathered via donation by Pope Paul VI in the early 1970s in an attempt to revitalize Christianity as a theme in art.

Most interesting, in my opinion, are the colorful ecclesiastical robes designed by Matisse during his cutouts phase. There are also works by Chagall, Braque, Kandinsky, Henry Moore, Morandi, Lipchitz, Picasso, Léger, Gauguin, and Utrillo.

Chiaramonti Museum & Braccio Nuovo (New Wing)

The Vatican Museums
Pinacoteca (Painting Gallery)
Rapahel Rooms
Sistine Chapel
Pio-Clementine Museum
Modern Religious Art
Chiaramonti/New Wing
Gregorian Egyptian Museum
Gregorian Etruscan Museum
Gregorian Profane Museum
Pio Christian Museum
Missionary-Ethnological Museum
Vatican Gardens

The Chiaramonti, arranged in 1807 by neoclassical master sculptor Canova, is a testament to the early 19th century concept of a museum: busts and statues lined up as if for military inspection on either side of a corridor stretching as far as the eye can see.

What it's best for is the sometime access from the end of the hall to the Braccio Nuovo. This rarely open wing floored with ancient mosaics contains some excellent Classical sculptures, the best of which is the AD 1st-century Augustus of Prima Porta, carrying a lance and stretching his arm out from the fourth recess to the right; his breastplate is carved with fantastic reliefs.

Gregorian Egyptian Museum

These Egyptian antiquities are housed in rooms decorated in 19th-century retro-Egyptian style by Giuseppe De Fabris. Room 2 has some painted mummy cases and sarcophagi along with jewelry and other funerary accouterments.

Room 3 contains the statues from an Egyptian-influenced fountain/temple built by Hadrian at his villa in Tivoli. Room 5 has excellent statues of pharaohs, queens, and gods dating back to the 21st century BC.

From here you can reach the Cortile della Pigna, a pleasant courtyard with a niche containing a 1st-century BC, 13-foot-high bronze fir cone (discovered in the Baths of Agrippa), and centered upon one of Arnaldo Pomodoro's weird riven globe sculptures (1990).

Gregorian Etruscan Museum

After the Villa Giulia, this is the most important Etruscan collection in Rome, starting with early Iron Age objects from the 9th century BC and including highlights like the 4th-century BC Mars of Todi, a bronze warrior influenced by Greek sculpture; some 5th-century BC engraved bronze hand mirrors; and funerary items from the 7th-century BC Tomb of the Regolini-Galassi, including an intricate gold clasp with repoussé relief figures.

Gregorian Profane Museum

This and the next two museums are housed in the 1960s structure through which you exit the Vatican complex, so if you have the stamina for a bit more... The "profane" (by which they mean "pagan") museum houses antiquities from the Roman and Greek eras, including some great bits of Greek sculpture.

Look for the 5th-century BC stele showing a slave boy handing his master a flask of oil, a couple of fragments off the Parthenon (including the head of one of Athena's horses), bunches of quality sarcophagi, and the wonderfully silly Heraclitus Mosaic, a dining room floor mosaic masterfully tromp l'oeil'ed to look eternally post-banquet, with leftover bits of food fallen to the ground and even a mosaic mouse nibbling on the mosaic crumbs.

Pio Christian Museum

If you wondered what Christian Art looked like when the people making it probably had grandparents who knew St. Peter personally, check out these Paleochristian works dating from the 2nd to 6th centuries.

There are sarcophagi from the catacombs, lots of inscriptions—the most important collection of its kind in the world—and several statues, including the 3rd-century Good Shepherd, the earliest representation of Christ in existence (even if this beardless lad with long curly hair and a sheep over his shoulders is a metaphor borrowed from the pagans).

Missionary-Ethnological Museum

This collection is a bit disturbing, since it's basically 3,000 years worth of booty gathered from across all continents by Christian missionaries who were busily converting the "paganism" right out of Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, African, Native American, and other cultures.

However, to its credit the Vatican has set these remarkable collections up to try to convey the history and meaning behind these non-European religions and the peoples from which they came. The Chinese exhibit is particularly worthy of your time.

Vatican Gardens

The two-hour foot-and-bus tour of these 16th-century gardens takes you past everything from an 8th-century German graveyard and the 16th-century Mannerist buildings that make up the Casina of Pius IV, to the Vatican Radio (designed by radio inventor Marconi himself in 1931) and the 1971 Audience Hall courtesy of one of Italy's foremost modern architects, Pier Luigi Nervi.

You must book the guided tour—at least three days in advance—at the Vatican Information office to the left of St. Peter's entrance (tel. +39-06-6988-4466)—though they prefer you send a fax (listing the names of all participants) a week in advance to tel. +39-06-6988-5100.

Visits generally run at 11am Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (November through February, Saturdays only).