Page 380 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

378  IT AL Y AND GREECE

2 Vatican Museums

Four centuries of papal patronage and Gallery of the
connoisseurship have resulted in one of the Candelabra
Once an open
world’s great collections of Classical and loggia, this gallery
Renaissance art. The Vatican houses many of Greek and
of the great archaeological finds of central Roman sculpture
Italy, including the Laocoön group and the has a fine view
of the Vatican
Apollo del Belvedere. The museums are Gardens.
housed in palaces originally built for wealthy
Renaissance popes such as Innocent VIII,
Sixtus IV, and Julius II. Parts of these were Room of the Biga
decorated with wonderful frescoes by the (a two-horse
chariot)
finest painters of the age – most notably
the Borgia Apartment, the Raphael Rooms
and the Sistine Chapel (see p380).
Gallery of
Tapestries
Gallery of Maps
The gallery is an
important record
of 16th-century
cartography and
history. This painting Etruscan
shows the Turkish siege Museum
of Malta in 1565.

The Raphael Loggia
contains Raphael
frescoes, but special
permission is needed Upper floor
to visit it.

Sistine
Chapel

The Cortile
del Belvedere
was designed by
Bramante in 1506.
Raphael Rooms The Borgia Apartment,
This detail from the Expulsion of frescoed by Pinturicchio in
Heliodorus from the Temple contains a a highly decorative style
portrait of Julius II. It is one of a series in the 1490s, also houses
of frescoes painted by Raphael for the a collection of modern
pope’s private apartments (see p380). religious art.
For hotels and restaurants see pp438–40 and pp441–3

378-379_EW_Europe.indd 378 14/07/16 10:16 am