Page 426 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

424  ROME AND LAZIO

3 Vatican Museums

Home to the Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms as well
as to one of the world’s most important art collections,
the Vatican Museums are housed in palaces originally
built for Renaissance popes Julius II, Innocent VIII
and Sixtus IV. Most of the later additions were made
in the 18th century, when priceless works of art
accumulated by earlier popes were first put on show.
Etruscan Museum
The Etruscan collection includes a
woman’s gold clasp (fibula) from the
7th-century-BC Regolini-Galassi tomb
at Cerveteri, north of Rome.
Gallery of Maps Gallery of the
The Siege of Malta is one of 40 Candelabra
maps of the Church’s territories,
frescoed by the 16th-century
cartographer Ignazio Danti
on the gallery’s walls.

Raphael Rooms
This is a detail of the Gallery of
Expulsion of Tapestries
Heliodorus from the
Temple, one of many
frescoes painted by
Raphael and his
pupils for Julius II’s
private apartments Stairs
(see p431). down
Upper
floor

Sala dei Chiaroscuri
Raphael
Loggia

Sistine Chapel
(see p428-30)

Gallery Guide
The museum complex is vast: the
Sistine Chapel is 20 to 30 minutes’ walk Modern religious
from the entrance, so allow plenty of art on view here
time. There is a strict one-way system, was sent to the
and it is best to be selective or choose popes by artists
one of four colour-coded itineraries, Borgia Apartment worldwide, such
which vary from 90 minutes to Pinturicchio and his assistants frescoed as Bacon, Ernst
a 5-hour marathon. these rooms for Alexander VI in 1492–5. and Carrà.
For hotels and restaurants in this region see pp573–6 and pp596–600

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