OUR ROME TOUR: INSIDE ANCIENT MUSEUM SERIES - PART 3

THE VATICAN MUSEUMS, ITALY.

The Vatican Museums are the museums of the Vatican City and they are located within the boundaries of the Vatican City. The Museums showcases works from the immense collection built up by the Popes throughout the centuries, including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and also the most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world.

The Museums was founded in the early 16th century by the Pope Julius II. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling decorated by Michelangelo and the Stanze di Raffaello decorated by Raphael, are on the visitors route through the Vatican Museums. In 2013, Statistical records shows that about six million (6,000,000) tourists visited the Museums,  and which makes the museum to be ranked as  the 6th most visited art museum in the world.

There are 54 galleries in total, with the Sistine Chapel. In this present century, the museums abhors works of Greek and Roman sculptures like Greek Cross Gallery, Sala Rotonda, Gallery of the Statues, Gallery of the busts, Cabinet of the masks, Sala delle Muse and Sala degli Animalia.

HISTORY

The Vatican Museums trace its origin to a marble sculpture, purchased 500 years ago. Precisely, the sculpture of Laocoön and his Sons which were discovered on the 14th of January, in the year 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Pope Julius II ordered Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo Buonarroti, who were working at the Vatican, to examine the discovery. Based on their recommendations, the pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. Pope Julius II displays the sculpture of Laocoön and his sons to the public at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery.

The Christianum Museum was founded by Pope Benedict XIV, and some of the Vatican collections formed the Lateran Museum, which Pope Pius IX founded by decree in 1854.

The art gallery was formerly housed in the Borgia Apartment, until Pope Pius XI ordered the construction of a proper building. The new building was then inaugurated on the 27th of October, in the year 1932. 

The building architecture was done by Luca Beltrami. The museums has paintings which includes Giotto's Stefaneschi Triptych, Olivuccio di Ciccarello, Raphael's Madonna of Foligno, Oddi Altarpiece and Transfiguration, Leonardo da Vinci's St. Jerome in the Wilderness, Caravaggio's Entombment, Perugino's Madonna and Child with Saints and San Francesco al Prato Resurrection, Filippo Lippi's Marsuppini Coronation, and the  Jan Matejko's Sobieski at Vienna.

The Vatican Museums celebrated their 500th anniversary in October 2006 by permanently opening the excavations of a Vatican Hill necropolis to the public.

MODERN RELIGIOUS ARTS AND SCULPTURE MUSEUMS

The Collection of Modern Religious Art houses range of paintings and sculptures from artists like Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico.

Museo Pio-Clementino, one of the sculpture museums in the Vatican Museums acquire its name from two popes, the Pope Clement XIV and the Pope Pius VI, these two popes are those who completed the Museum. Pope Clement XIV came up with the idea of creating a new museum in Pope Innocent VIII's Belvedere palace and started the refurbishment work.

Pope Clement XIV founded the Pio-Clementino museum in 1771, and originally it contained the Renaissance and antique works. The museum and collection were later enlarged by Clement's successor, Pope Pius VI. Today, the museum abhors works of Greek and Roman sculptures.

Other sculpture museums in the Vatican Museums includes the Museo Chiaramonti which was named after Pope Pius VII; Museo Gregoriano Etrusco founded by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836; Museo Gregoriano Egiziano which houses grand collection of artifacts dating from ancient Egypt and was inaugurated on the 2nd of February, in the year 1839 to commemorate the anniversary of Gregory XVI's accession to the papacy.

PLAN YOUR TRIP TODAY TO ROME 

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