The beautiful country of Italy is home to a number of famous artworks, landmarks, cuisine, and remnants of history's greatest tales. In addition, Italy houses the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in none other than Vatican City. The Vatican and surrounding areas withhold the ancient history of the religion with artifacts, sculptures, and paintings to show for it. Some of the most well known being Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Pietá, Appartamento Borgia, and the Sistine Chapel.
The Sistine Chapel is one of the most famous pieces of artifacts in the heart of the city. The ceiling and walls carefully painted and sculpted making up one of the most sacred places on Earth in the Catholic faith. The work is attributed to the great, Michelangelo. He alone painted the 65-foot ceiling of the chapel by illustrating biblical stories that make up Christianity. Some of his most famous pieces within the chapel are the Creation of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood and The Last Judgment. The masterpiece took countless days and months, all while requiring the painter to lie on his back for hours on end as he carefully constructed one of the most legendary pieces of artwork the world has seen.
I was fortunate enough to visit Vatican City and see for myself the masterpiece. Upon entering the chapel, the tour guide went over every component to the chapel, going into detail the stories behind each piece and why Michelangelo portrayed it the way he did. It is important that before entering the chapel you are dressed in the proper attire, specifically that your shoulders are covered and everything above the knee as well. Something that holds so much meaning to my faith of choice, here is my experience of my visit of the Sistine Chapel…
We make our way down the stairs and I see the entrance with a sign hung above announcing that this is the Sistine chapel. Staying close to my parents and brother, I take a deep breath as we are motioned in. Instantly, as I enter, it hits me. My eyes widen and I am overwhelmed by the massive amount of emotions and feelings that fill me at once. My head slides back and I am glued to the diligent and mesmerizing artwork above and on all the walls of the chapel. I am engulfed in the colors, details, and contents. The chapel is smaller than I had pictured, but it is nearly impossible to notice with everything surrounding me.
“SILENCE PLEASE!” A thick Italian accent demands over the loud speaker, “No video. No photo.” I am standing in the center of perhaps the most sacred area of the Catholic Church. I feel a large sense of pride and passion as I take in the breathtaking images that I am surrounded in. I swallow hard and fight back tears as I study the ceiling above. Over 25,00 people visit the Vatican each day, yet while I stood in the middle of hundreds of people that come from all over the globe, I feel nothing but the presence of God. For with the images displayed around me I feel a sense of certainty, which I have not yet felt before. A feeling that says, “This is your faith!” A feeling that solidifies all that I believe and all that I have worshiped. All the years of Catholic school, all the biblical stories I was taught of the Old and New Testaments, all the practices I was instructed to recite, and all that I was raised to believe in, at that very moment it all made sense. I gained a feeling of completeness, a feeling of fulfillment, a feeling that my faith was missing, and overall I felt complete in my faith. There was nothing like it.
