The photos are some of the perfect views from the top level of the castle. In one of the photos you can see an aqueduct running from the castle to the Vatican. That's actually a popeaduct, as its sole purpose is to house a raised passageway connecting the Vatican palace to the castle, enabling the pope to flee to the greater protection afforded by the castle during all the riots and invasions.

Since the popes spent alot of time here, the interior, which was previously focused on housing and torturing prisoners, evolved to a sort of palace, albeit with no windows and really thick walls. One practical note to visitors; the only public bathroom is on the entry level at the roof, prior to descending through the many levels of the palace to the eventual exit. So go before you start the descent, or you'll regret the very long backtrack.

The new church was started around 1450, and was originally planned to be ten times larger than the present-day St. Peter's, which would have been grotesque. Plans eventually got scaled down to more realistic proportions, and Bramante took charge of the first stage of planning. When he died the famous painter Raphael took over, to be succeeded by the even more famous painter Michelangelo, and on and on it went, over two hundred years. With the intense involvement of dozens of popes and architects, the building was bound to be a mess, which it is, but the sheer size and no expense spared approach to decorating at least provide a dazzling sensory overload. The overall effect is similar to Grand Central Station, with lots of crosses and Virgin Mary's.



The most interesting part of the church is actually below it, where the supposed remains of Peter lie, and, more interestingly, a recently discovered burial area for Rome's pagans. It's apparently appropriately spooky, and vast, extending in all directions for an as yet to be determined distance. It sounded really cool, but unfortunately you need to plan many months ahead to score a ticket, which we didn't do.

As you can see, St. Peter's is seriously huge. The piazza in front of the 350 foot facade of the church is flanked by two huge collonaded walkways designed by Bernini. The piazza can hold 400,000 people, and most days it feels like it comes close to that. There's always a lot of action on the piazza, mostly tourists eating ice cream and groups of pilgrims. Somchai has a thing for nuns, so we have lots of photos of groups of nuns, which I have to admit are funny. One nun can look atmospherically holy, a group can only look funny.



The church is of course the largest in the world, and that's really the point. The original St Peter's, built over the apostle's tomb, was built around 300 AD. But as each pope wanted to build memorials in the church, it became far too cramped. So the old church was demolished to make way for the biggest, though much unloved, church in the world. Ironically it also caused half of Europe to leave the Catholic church, as the popes, desperate for cash, had their agents flogging indulgences promising thousands of years off of your spells in hell or purgatory for the right price. Martin Luther and others were grossed out with the tackiness of the whole thing, and Protestantism was born.

We broke for lunch at l'Etoile, the rooftop restaurant of the not very impressive Atlante Hotel. L'Etoile is probably the best restaurant in the Vatican, which frankly isn't very hard to accomplish. It's a bit too upscale for the package tour groups that make up the vast majority of Vatican tourists, so we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. As you can see, the terrace has fantastic views of the entire city. Food is quite good if unsurprising, service is surly and slow, possibly because we had interrupted their otherwise customer free afternoon. (Food-12, Decor-12, Service-5)

The next day it was time to pay our respects to the pope at the Vatican. I'd been here a few times before and knew that the lines were horrible, so we got up early, and arrived at the Vatican museum by 8.30. It was a half hour before the place opened, but the line still stretched along the half mile of formidable walls (built by Michelangelo no less). The line moved quickly, though, and we descended the funky spiral staircase and into one of the world's greatest and most congested museums.