WHAT THE VATICAN CONSISTS OF

[_The numbers in brackets refer to Plan_]

The Vatican, says Hare, in his _Walks in Rome_, is the largest palace in the world. He gives its measurements as one thousand one hundred and fifty-one English feet long, and seven hundred and sixty-seven broad. These measurements are, with slight variations, repeated in other guide-books, with the exception that in Baedeker’s _Central Italy_ it is further stated that the total extent covered by the palace is thirteen and a half acres, while in Baedeker’s _Paris_ it is stated that the Louvre and the fragment of the Tuileries together cover forty-eight acres. And in any case you have to ask to what these measurements of length and breadth refer. From the left-hand edge of the Sistine Chapel to the extreme point of the Sculpture Museum, built out of Innocent’s VIII.’s Villa Belvedere, the length must be very much greater than eleven hundred and fifty-one feet. For the long Gallery of the Library alone measures a thousand and twenty feet. But if the width be taken to refer to the stretch from the back of the sacristies of the Sistine Chapel to the back of the Papal apartments, that may be approximately correct. It is to be noted also that whereas Hare and Murray each concede eleven thousand apartments, Baedeker says that the number of halls, chapels, saloons, and private apartments is more likely to come to one thousand than to eleven thousand, while Misson, who visited the Vatican intelligently, in the reign of Queen Anne, says twelve thousand five hundred. Be this as it may, all of them concede twenty courts and eight grand staircases, and Murray puts down the minor staircases at about two hundred.

We must now consider the principal buildings of which the Vatican Palace consists. The first of the twenty courtyards is the Cortile di San Damaso (4), standing at the head of the Scala Pia (1), the Pope’s staircase, which leads up on the right directly you enter the bronze gates. It is the grand courtyard of the Vatican, officially, for the apartments of the Pope, the apartments of the Cardinal Secretary of State, and the entrance to the library used by members of the Household open off it.

A second courtyard (e) is in the centre of the apartments actually occupied by the Pope. A third, just to the south of the Papal apartments, is called the Courtyard of the Grooms, _Cortile dei Palafrenieri_ (c). The fourth is the Court of the Parrot (_Cortile del Pappagallo_) (10). It is situated between the Sala Ducale (24, 25) and the Borgia Rooms (36, 37, 38, 39), in the oldest part of the Vatican Palace proper, built in the fifteenth century by Nicholas V., Sixtus IV., and Alexander VI. It is connected by a narrow passage with the Court of the Iron Gate, the _Cortile del Portone di Ferro_ (11), which stands between the Sala Regia (26) and the ante-chapel of the Sistine Chapel (29) on one side and the Torre Borgia (40) on the other. This again opens out of the _Cortile della Sentinella_ (12)--Court of the Guard--the place where you always see a little knot of the Swiss Guards in their picturesque uniforms as you begin to climb the hill past the entrance of the Picture Gallery to the Pavilion (100), which admits you to the Sculpture Galleries, the Library, and the Pope’s Garden, and all the other parts of the Vatican to which admission can be secured by payment.

As far as the exterior is concerned, this is by far the most interesting part of the Vatican Palace. Its lofty gateway and towers, with their beetling machicoles, the heavy, overhanging balconies, reminding one, with their forbidding strength, of the rock-like Papal Palace of Avignon, are full of the atmosphere of the fifteenth century. There is a grimness in the very colour of the old brown walls. The whole aspect gives you an idea of the many-towered castle which bore the name of the Vatican in the days of the Old St. Peter’s--the one actual fragment of the gigantic _enceinte_ with which Nicholas V. proposed to surround the Vatican Hill, filling its interior with the Holy and Royal city which was to exceed the Palatine of the Cæsars in the vastness and splendour of its buildings, and to contain such a library as would make it the focus of light and learning for all Christendom, for all the civilized world. Thomas Parentucelli, the little man of Sarzana, did not live and work and dream in vain, though the Popes are no longer kings of the Earth, and of all his buildings on the Vatican Hill only one tiny chapel, made heavenly by the genius of Fra Angelico, remains perfect--though even of his books but a handful are left. For the Vatican Library is still the library of libraries, where the originals that have given us our copies of the classic writers of Greece and Rome almost all lie. That is the outward and visible sign, and added to that is the inward and spiritual grace of learning and scholarship which has rarely ceased to illuminate the Papal Court since Nicholas V. gave it birth. He might well have been figured as Moses drawing the waters of learning from the dry rock with a stroke of his rod--the pastoral staff.

Only separated from this old brown bit of the Vatican by the building of Nicholas, which was converted into the Borgia Apartments, is the seventh courtyard (58), the Cortile del Belvedere, which is divided from the ninth, the Giardino della Pigna (39), by the Vatican Library, and the Braccio Nuovo (72) of the Sculpture Galleries, and the little court of the Vatican printing-office (64), which must be counted the eighth.

The entire space occupied by the seventh, eighth, and ninth courtyards, the Cortile del Belvedere, the Giardino della Pigna, and the Giardino della Stamperia, and the buildings which divide them, formed one superb courtyard in the building designed by Bramante at the command of Pope Julius II., to connect the Vatican Palace of his enemies the Borgias with the villa or garden palace of Pope Innocent VIII., which received its name of the Belvedere from its beautiful view. There is another little garden or court, the tenth, in the centre of the Villa of Innocent VIII., which now forms the principal Sculpture Museum. This also is called the Cortile del Belvedere. Of the remaining courtyards, those of the Maresciallo of the Conclave (14), and the Maggiordomo (15), abut on the Sala Ducale, and that of the Archivi is on the far side of the Pavilion by which you enter the Sculpture Museum. But neither these nor the Court of the Falegnami behind the Papal apartments concern the general public--nor do any other of the courts except the Cortile del Forno, which lies at the back of St. Peter’s where you turn up to the Sculpture Gallery.

Mausoleum, now in the Grotte Nuove of St. Peter’s Crypt.]

Peter’s Crypt.]

The principal staircases of the Vatican are the Scala Pia (1), the Scala Regia; the Scala Nobile, which leads up to the Hall of the Biga and the Etruscan Museum; the staircase to the Museo Pio-Clementino; the great staircase on the north side of the Courtyard of San Damaso; the staircase which leads from the Sistine Chapel down to St. Peter’s, and the staircase leading to the Pope’s apartments up from the Courtyard of San Damaso.

The great Scala Pia which sweeps up from the Bronze Doors to the Courtyard of S. Damaso (and consequently to the Pope’s apartments), receives its name from Pius IX., who converted it from an open staircase at the same time as he enclosed the south side of the Courtyard of S. Damaso. Half-way up it is the office of the Pope’s Maestro di Camera, and at the top are the apartments of the Maggiordomo, consisting of a large cloak-room, fitted with tables on which visitors lay their coats and hats, leading into a luxurious apartment of the dimensions of a hall, where the visitors wait and the principal secretaries have their tables, and thence into the Maggiordomo’s office itself.

The Scala Regia is a mountain of stone, claimed by ardent Roman Catholics to be the finest interior staircase in the world. It was designed, like the glorious colonnades of the Piazza of St. Peter’s, by Bernini. It was ordered by the Barberini Pope (Urban VIII.), but not finished till the time of the Chigi Pope (Alexander VII.), whose arms it bears.

It furnishes a magnificent prospect as it mounts up from the Bronze Doors, the public entrance to the Vatican, stretching away in a long vista, commencing with a superb Ionic colonnade; and it must not be forgotten that Bernini also designed enormous gilt consoles for the further decoration, and for the illumination of his great staircase, which still exist but are kept stored away; I allude to them elsewhere. The stucco ornamentations above the arches and on the ceilings which bear the arms of Alexander VII. are the work of the sculptor Algardi and have considerable beauty and elegance, though they are not at all comparable to the work of the Sicilian Giacomo Serpotta, who lived a hundred years later, and, of course, may have been inspired by Algardi. The other staircases will be described as they come into the topographical plan.

At the top of the Scala Pia, as I have said, is the beautiful Cortile di S. Damaso (4), the royal court of the Vatican, which, in its conception, was one of the masterpieces of Bramante, though it has been altered so considerably--particularly under Pius IX.--that much of its original grace is lost. Good old Pio Nono was, it must be confessed, on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand he had Bramante’s most elegant arcades (20, 21, 22) to consider, on the other hand there were the frescoes of Raffaelle and Giovanni da Udine, which were feeling the effects of four centuries of semi-exposure to the weather. As in the case of St. Peter’s and the Cortile del Belvedere, Bramante was sacrificed to later ideas. The airy and soaring effect of the triple arcades with which he had surrounded the Courtyard of S. Damaso was lost in the glass screens with which the arches were filled. But the frescoes benefited by the conversion of the loggias into a sort of winter garden. The right hand, or east side, of this court is taken up with the apartments, said to be only twenty-two in number, which Sixtus V. built round a minor courtyard for the actual use of the Popes. Of these the Pope’s library, study and bedroom, private reception-room, and a sort of antechamber to it (i, h, g), look south across the Piazza of St. Peter’s over. Rome. The throneroom, the private chapel and its anteroom, the anteroom which leads into them and the second public anteroom, occupy the east side of the quadrangle. The Hall of the Grooms and the first public anteroom occupy the north side, and most of the west side is taken up with the state entrance and the staircase and the fine Sala Clementina (f), in which one of the three pickets of Swiss Guards on duty at the Vatican is stationed.

Out of this opens the Hall of the Bussolanti. This is the name given to the lay attendants, dressed in crimson velvet, who mount guard over the Bussola--the door for keeping out draughts--which gives access to the Pope’s private antechambers. There are thirty-six Bussolanti. In their hall, the laity who are admitted to an audience with the Pope leave their hats and coats and umbrellas. After passing the Bussola you thread a series of antechambers, says Goyau. “The first is guarded by gendarmes, and the secretaries of Cardinals await here the return of their masters. The second is in charge of the Palatine Guards. Turning off to the right the visitor, by a third hall decorated with tapestries, reaches a fourth, in charge of the Noble Guards. To the right a door which can be opened wide gives access to the Chapel of the Holy Father. And it is in this hall that you are stationed when you are present at the Pope’s Mass. A fifth room, called the Anticamera d’Onore, is adorned with the Papal Throne. When you are granted a private audience you attend in this room. It is here that the Pope takes up his position to receive important bodies of visitors; to receive, at the New Year, or on the anniversary of his coronation, the congratulations of the Prelates and Cardinals; and to hear during Lent and Advent the _preachings_ intended for the Papal Court. Two Camerieri d’Onore, one in a violet habit, the other with _spada e cappa_, are on duty in this antechamber. Before a door at the bottom a Noble Guard is on duty. This door admits to the Anticamera Segreta, reserved for prelates who are at least Camerieri Segreti, and for Cardinals. From this point you have only a threshold to cross and you are at the feet of the Pope.”

This is the easternmost portion of the Vatican Palace, and under its shadow on the south side are the Court of the Grooms, etc. The other two sides of the Court of S. Damaso, which is the next portion of the palace westwards, are taken up with the Loggie of Raffaelle (20, 21, 22), completed by him as the architect from the design of Bramante. Only a limited number of the panels, called Raffaelle’s Bible, because they are taken from Bible history, are from Raffaelle’s hand; but of great interest also are the _stucchi_ and arabesques executed by Giovanni da Udine, who was the sole artist employed in the first-floor gallery on the west side. I have told in another chapter how he copied these arabesques from the newly discovered baths of Titus; they have the double merit of reproducing an ancient Roman monument and being extremely graceful and spirited. The Loggie of Raffaelle do not fall within the scope of this book, for they are one of the parts of the palace which everybody visits. It is through Giovanni da Udine’s loggia that the students who have the privilege of reading in the Vatican Library, as well as the privileged inhabitants of the Vatican, enter the Library, passing along the Gallery of the Inscriptions (Galleria Lapidaria), which is nearly seven hundred feet in length and covered with five thousand fragments of pagan and early Christian inscriptions, sarcophagi and cippi, collected mainly by Pius VII. when Napoleon had carried off all the prizes of sculpture from the Vatican galleries, though a few of them were collected by Clement XIV. and Pius VI. Underneath this is the _atelier_ in which the famous Vatican mosaics, upon which I have said a few words in another chapter, are made. The Gallery of Inscriptions (42) leads into the Chiaramonti Museum (77), which I shall leave until I am speaking of the Sculpture Galleries, to which it belongs. It also received its present designation and use from Pius VII.--the Chiaramonti Pope--and the two together fill one of the two great wings, nearly four hundred yards long, which Pope Julius II. commissioned Bramante to build to unite the palaces which stood in his day with the Villa of Pope Innocent VIII. on the northern edge of the Vatican Hill.

_From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

It is best to retrace our steps to the Loggia of Giovanni da Udine, at the back of which are four interesting rooms; the first and largest of the Borgia Apartments, the smoking-room of the Cardinals, called also the Galleriola, (35), or the audience-room; the Spogliatoio, or Hall of the Pappagallo (35), and the Hall of the Paramenti (23). I have mentioned these in order from north to south, but I will take the last, which is entered through the Sala Ducale (24, 25), first. It is singularly well named, for the term Sala dei Paramenti might be applied with equal fidelity to its being the room where the Cardinals put on their sacerdotal robes for great functions, or its being the room with the tapestry hangings with the arms of the Farnese Pope, Paul III., 1534-1549, which are said to be so priceless.

A door from the Sala dei Paramenti admits into the Sala del Pappagallo, or Hall of the Parrot, which contains the nuptial tapestries of Louis XIV. and is the room set apart for the Pope to robe in before he goes to functions in St. Peter’s. Here the Cardinal Secretary of State gives his state dinners, and here, in ordinary life, the officers of the Swiss Guard dine. The long gallery opening out of the end of this room, with reclining benches along its side, after the manner of the guard-rooms of Tunis, is the Galleriola, now the smoking-room of the Cardinals.

The Borgia Apartments are now approached through the Sculpture Galleries, but they have a separate staircase in the north-west corner of the Courtyard of S. Damaso. They formed for some years the official residence of the present Pope’s Prime Minister, the Cardinal Secretary of State, and are the subject of a separate chapter. The first of them--known as the Sala dei Pontefici, or Hall of the Popes (36)--is much the largest. Leo X. had the ceiling decorated with mythological emblems by Giovanni da Udine and Pierino del Vaga, pupils of Raffaelle. It is impossible to believe that the lost Hours of Raffaelle lie, as some have said, under these frescoes, because Leo X. was far too great an admirer of the work of Raffaelle to have allowed a jot or tittle of it to be hidden.

This room is hung with magnificent French tapestries of the sixteenth century, mostly representing the story of Cephalus and Procris. Here I must warn readers that all guide-books, except the latest, are incorrect in the information which they give about the Borgia Apartments, as they have been subjected to so many changes. Even Hare’s _Walks in Rome_, brought up to date by a man who knows his Rome so well as Mr. St. Clair Baddeley, states that they have been opened as a kind of “Mediæval museum of the Papacy,” _Museo di Leone XIII._ (Hare, 1905), while in Black’s _Guide to Rome_ (1906), it is repeated that they are the “Mediæval museum of the Papacy,” and that Room I. serves as the anteroom of the Swiss Guard, while another guide-book places the armoury in them. Until twenty years ago all the printed books of the Vatican Library were kept in them.

Coats and hats and umbrellas are left in the Sala dei Pontefici (36), which leads into the second of the Borgia Apartments, where the celebrated frescoes by Pinturicchio, which rival his frescoes in the Library of Siena, begin. This is called the Hall of the Mysteries, or the Hall of the Madonna (37). Here except in the hours during which the public were admitted, one of the Cardinal’s secretaries used to sit who received the cards of visitors admitted for an audience. The regular reception hours were after the Angelus. The exquisite Annunciation is in this room.

From the _Camera della Vita della Madonna_ opens the _Camera della Vita dei Santi_ (38), in which the frescoes are glorious. For here are the story of Santa Barbara; the infinitely lovely picture of St. Catherine (Lucrezia Borgia) disputing with the philosophers before the Emperor; the San Sebastian; the Santa Susanna, and the Isis and Osiris ceiling, selected to give the legend of the bull Apis, the ox being the Borgia arms. This is the waiting-room in which visitors used to remain after the secretary has passed them until the Cardinal sent for them, or more ordinarily, came in person to call them; for the courtesy and courtliness of the great Vatican officials is exquisite.

The fourth room opening out of these is called the _Camera delle Arti e Scienze_ (39), where the Cardinal held his audiences. This, again, has superb Pinturicchio frescoes, representing the Seven Liberal Arts.

From there a staircase of about a dozen steps leads up into the _Torre Borgia_ (40), where there are two rooms, the first of which, with large oriel windows, was the Cardinal Secretary’s study. Just below the ceiling runs a fresco of the Apostles, each holding his special portion of the Creed, whence its name, “The Hall of the Credo.” The celebrated Nozze Aldobrandini, the finest antique fresco known before the grand discoveries at Pompeii, is no longer in this room, as stated in Hare’s _Walks in Rome_, 1905. It is now in the Vatican Library, where anyone can see it, whereas these two rooms in the Torre Borgia were till recently never shown to the public. The other room in the tower, known as the _Sala del Sibylle_, has an elaborately frescoed ceiling, and I believe some fine tapestries, but I have not seen this room.

I am told that not even the Cardinal Secretary has seen the bathroom in the suite of rooms higher up in this tower, once occupied by Cardinal Bibiena, the patron of Raffaelle, whose niece was betrothed to the painter, and lies buried by his side in the Pantheon; this was painted by Raffaelle with mythological subjects. Something in these beautiful frescoes offended the prudery of Gregory XIV.’s advisers, and the bath was taken away; and the pictures, which were spared as being some of Raffaelle’s good work, were covered up with wooden panelling to turn the offending bathroom into a chapel. It is said that the panelling has now been removed, but I have not heard of anyone having been allowed to see the pictures.

Over the Borgia Apartments are Raffaelle’s Stanze. Admittance to them is by a staircase turning off the Scala Regia of Bernini. After passing through an anteroom and two small rooms hung with modern pictures of miracles and martyrdoms, you enter the _Sala della Immacolata_, adorned with huge pictures of the promulgation of the Immaculate Conception by Pius IX., which contains in the centre the superb gilt ark, presented to Pius IX. by the French clergy, one of the finest pieces of modern cabinet-making.

his Stanze. Showing the Exterior of Old St. Peter’s. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

From this you enter the Stanze, which represent the highest triumph of Raffaelle. For Sodoma, Perugino, Luca Signorelli, and other great fifteenth-century masters had all but completed the frescoing of these rooms when Julius II. decided to have them re-frescoed by Raffaelle. You cannot help wondering what became of their feelings, if not of their work. The first Stanza contains the Fire in the Borgo, the Coronation of Charlemagne, the Defeat of the Saracens at Ostia, and Leo III. justifying himself before Charlemagne. These are all by Raffaelle. Perugino’s pictures remain on the ceiling, and the mosaics on the floor come from an ancient Roman villa. This is called _Stanza del Incendio_. In the second room, called the _Stanza della Segnatura_, the arabesques of the ceiling are by Raffaelle. The walls are covered by some of Raffaelle’s greatest frescoes: the School of Athens, the Disputa, and the Parnassus are in this room. The third room, the _Stanza d’Eliodoro_, was (except the ceiling, which was probably by Giulio Romano) entirely by Raffaelle’s own hand. Here are the Liberation of St. Peter, the Mass of Bolsena, the Expulsion of Heliodorus, and the Repulse of Attila. The fourth room, called the _Sala di Costantino_, is by the pupils of Raffaelle, though preliminary sketches had been made by Raffaelle for the Battle between Constantine and Maxentius. The ceiling is a great deal later; it was completed under Sixtus V. (1585-1590). A door at the end of this room leads into the old hall of the Pope’s grooms (_palafrenieri_), which, according to Tuker and Malleson, was entirely decorated in chiaroscuro by Raffaelle, though the paintings have been retouched and spoilt by Carlo Maratta and Zucchero. Doors at the end to the left and right lead into Raffaelle’s Loggie and the Chapel of Nicholas V., which is one of the gems of the Vatican, decorated with the masterpieces of Fra Angelico. They were his last and most matured work, executed 1450-1455, and can only be compared to the brilliant Riccardi Chapel of Benozzo Gozzoli at Florence.

After seeing Raffaelle’s Stanze and the Chapel of Nicholas V., it is usual to proceed to the second floor of the Loggie, which enclose the Cortile of S. Damaso, known as Raffaelle’s Loggie, alluded to above. After leaving them, more stairs are ascended to the upper tier of the Loggie, which were decorated with maps under Clement VII. by Antonio da Varese. From this you entered the anteroom of the former Pinacoteca.

The new Pinacoteca is on the road up to the Sculpture Galleries; it was adapted from the disused stables of the Pope. The pictures are not very numerous, but include one or two of the most famous paintings in the world, such as Raffaelle’s Transfiguration.

I will suppose you to have finished your first day’s perambulation of the Vatican by descending from the picture gallery to the Bronze Doors, though, unless accompanied by a very high official of the Vatican Household, you would never have been allowed to have seen all these things one after another as convenience dictated, or to descend this way.

On your way down you would have passed the entrance to the Sala Regia and the famous apartments which lead off it. It would have been better to have passed them in any case, even if you had had time to devote to them, for the right way by which to approach the Sala Regia is to enter the Bronze Gate and mount Bernini’s magnificent staircase, the Scala Regia, so that you may get a true impression of its magnificence.

The Sala Regia (26), called also the _Aula Magna_, i.e. the Grand Hall, was built by Antonio Sangallo the younger, for that rather baroque Pope, Paul III., for the reception of the Ambassadors of foreign Sovereigns. It is very large and has a very ornate stucco ceiling by Pierino del Vaga, though the _stucchi_ over the door are by Daniele da Volterra. The frescoes of the Triumphs of the Popes are by Vasari, the Zuccheri, and others. The room is over a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and seventy feet high. The door on the left admits to the Sistine Chapel (30), which I need not describe, as it is one of the parts of the Vatican usually visited by sightseers.

The door opposite admits to the Sala Ducale (24, 25), a very long, narrow low room, constructed by Bernini, known as the _Aula Minor_; it is divided into two parts by an arch in the most degraded style of art, composed of curtains and cupids, also by Bernini. Through it the Pope and his Cardinals go to functions at St. Peter’s after robing in the Sala del Pappagallo and the Sala dei Paramenti. And visitors who are lucky enough to get permission to see these two rooms have to approach them through the Sala Ducale. Another door on the same side of the Sala Regia as the Sala Ducale, leads down to the court of the Maresciallo of the Papal Conclave (14).

Opposite this is the door which admits to the Leonine Chapel in the Gallery, which runs over the porch of St Peter’s, built by Carlo Maderno, and hardly mentioned in any guide-book, although it is of very great importance, as it gives on to the gallery of St. Peter’s, from which the newly-elected Pope blesses the people, and contains the window over the Piazza from which he used to bless the people before the loss of the temporal power in 1870. It was converted into a chapel by Leo XIII.

Between it and the Cappella Paolina (34), which is entered by a door at the south-west end of the Sala Regia, are a number of small chambers, in which are stored the gilt consoles, and other portable decorations designed by Bernini for St. Peter’s.

The Cappella Paolina (34) is chiefly famous for having two huge frescoes by Michel Angelo, much restored by his pupils. It was built by the same architect as the Sala Regia, and has some of the best late _stucchi_ in the Vatican.

Though the Sistine Chapel, being so well-known, does not fall within the compass of this work, it is necessary to traverse it, and pass through a little door under Michel Angelo’s fresco of the Last Judgment, to enter the succession of small chambers (31) which form its treasury, where the Pope’s vestments, the vestments for the Cardinals on special occasions, the Popes’ tiaras, the Golden Rose, and other objects of the highest interest are kept. At the back of the Sistine Chapel a staircase (32) leads down from the Vatican to St. Peter’s.

To see the remaining parts of the Vatican, which include all the Museums and the Library, the ordinary visitor has to cross the great Piazza of St. Peter’s, and walk round three-quarters of the Church, until he finds himself in the Cortile del Forno, a quadrangular court, with a fountain in the middle of it, which has St. Peter’s on the one side and the Mint on the other. The Mint, standing on a kind of a terrace, is territorially not part of the Vatican: it is the one spot on the Vatican Hill of which the Italian Government took possession. The road which passes between the two is the Via delle Fondamenta, along which Pope Leo XIII. took that memorable drive which was taken to mean coming out of his captivity, referred to in another chapter.

Before passing under the arch to go up the Vialone di Belvedere to the Sculpture Gallery, glance to your right, where a group of fifteenth-century buildings, tower and gateway and balcony, brown and feudal-looking, arrest your attention. At the entrance are sentries in the half-mediæval dress of the Swiss Guard. That embattled gateway admits to the Cortile della Sentinella (12); one of the three places in the Vatican which has a _corps-de-garde_, the state entrance to the palace by which Kings and Cardinals and Ambassadors enter to visit the Pope. This court, as I have said, is bounded by the Sistine Chapel (30) on the south, and on the north by the Chapel of Pius V. (56), and the end of the Museo Cristiano. It opens into a second court, known as the Cortile del Portone di Ferro (11); bounded by the Sistine Ante-chapel (29) and the Sala Regia (26) on the south, and the Torre Borgia (40) on the north. This is divided from the Cortile del Pappagallo (10) by a wing containing two small halls--the halls of the Noble Guard. The ground floor rooms round these quadrangles are devoted to various humble and prosaic uses. The chamber on the first floor at the angle of the Vialone and the Cortile della Sentinella is the Chapel of Pius V., with the Room of Small Cabinets beside it. Then follow various rooms of the Christian Museum of the Vatican Library; the Hall of the Christian Paintings (55), the Hall of the Papiri (54), with the Hall of the Nozze Aldobrandini (55) at right angles to them, spanning the road, which has the Room of the Terra-cottas leading off it, the Christian Museum (53), properly so called, the Hall of Aristides (52), the Hall of the Obelisk (51), the Hall of the Bonaventura (50), the Hall of the Vatican Manuscripts (61), the Libraries of the Alexandrine Collection (62), the Ottoboni Collection (65), the Capponi Collection (65), the Borghigiana Collection (66), the first two halls of the Library (66), and the Museo Profano (67). The whole of these, from the Chapel of Pius V. northwards, form the western long wing from the old parts of the Palace to Innocent VIII.’s Villa, and they are confronted all the way along by the Pope’s private garden, separated from them by the Vialone di Belvedere. In the whole of this portion of the Vatican Library, nearly four hundred yards long, you do not see a single book: they are all manuscripts, and put away in presses in the ancient Roman fashion; but you see a good many museum objects. As far as it goes, the Vatican Library would be one of the most interesting museums in Rome if they only let you stop an instant to take anything in. The rooms underneath were constructed for coach-houses and stables. Part of them has been converted into the new Pinacoteca for the Pope’s pictures, and some of the stables have been turned into new chambers for the Archivio, or archive office.

The finest picture which has survived from Classical times.]

I have spoken elsewhere of the enormous Cortile,[2] between three and four hundred yards long, which Bramante designed to fill the entire space between the two long wings from the old Palace to the Villa of Innocent VIII., of which I have been describing the westernmost. It was to have had a triple tier of the classic arcades in which Bramante delighted; and would, without doubt, have been the finest Cortile in Europe. Tournaments and races were to have been held in it. One could see in it the pagan mind of Pope Julius II., purposing to match the Circus of Caligula and Nero, out of which, owing to the execution of St. Peter, the Vatican grew. At the Palace end there was what the ancient Romans called an _esedra_, a sort of open-air apse (60), in which the Roman Emperors were wont to ensconce themselves like gods in niches. There is one in the Stadium of Domitian on the Palatine, and another in the Baths of Trajan on the Esquiline. Bramante designed his _esedra_ to be a sort of theatre. It is to be noted that bull-fights have been held here. Jousting went on in the Court of the Tournaments until the time of Sixtus V., as long, in fact, as it went on anywhere. The name applied to the arcades when they were first built was the Porticus Julii. The northern half, now the Giardino della Pigna, was always the height of a terrace above the southern half.

Sixtus V. spoiled for ever the conception of Bramante by building the Sala Sistina (48) (his magnificent new hall which was to receive the Vatican Library) right across the middle of the vast quadrangle; it is the Sala Sistina, two hundred and twenty feet long, forty-eight feet wide, and twenty-nine feet high, gorgeously arabesqued, in which the visitor sees, in glass cases, the most precious manuscripts of the Vatican, and an alarming number of Sèvres vases, presented to Pius IX. The rooms underneath the Sala Sistina have at various times been given up to armouries and stables, but Leo XIII., who loved to ennoble his palace like the old Popes before him, inaugurated the most sweeping and effective changes in the Vatican Library since the days of Sixtus himself. He was desirous of taking the books out of the Borgia Apartments, which, when he was elected to the Papacy, formed the library of printed books. But he was even more desirous to fulfil the aspiration of Nicholas V., by making the splendid Library of the Vatican a light of the world, “a city set upon an hill.” He gave the order for the rooms under the Sala Sistina to be converted into a library to receive all the printed books. The change was effected with astonishing celerity, and when it was ready, the whole two hundred and fifty thousand books stored in the Borgia Apartments were transferred to it in fourteen days by fifteen workmen. You go down into the new library close to the entrance of the Sala Sistina from the Gallery of Inscriptions. I should have mentioned that before you enter the Sala Sistina you cross the first of a range of four small rooms. It is called the writer’s room (44), but is chiefly used for sticks and umbrellas, which must be left there. Out of it open in succession the small Reading Room, the Room of the Papiri (46), and the Librarian’s Room (47).

At the far end of the New Library, adjoining the Archives (the new rooms of which are on the ground floor facing the Vatican Gardens), is Cardinal Mai’s Library; and between the two are three reading-rooms facing the Cortile del Belvedere, and the Palatina, Aracœli, and Zelada Libraries, facing the Cortile of the Stamperia, or printing-office of the Vatican, which divides it from the Braccio Nuovo; a new Sculpture Gallery, which Pius VII. had built by Raffaelle Stern in 1821, and which contains some of the gems of the Vatican Collection. The Braccio Nuovo forms the south side of the Giardino della Pigna, the north side of which is the old Belvedere, the Villa of Innocent VIII., which has been converted into the Vatican Sculpture Museum. To many people this is their favourite spot in the whole Vatican, for it is here that the treasures are amassed for which it is hardest to find a parallel anywhere in the world--the inimitable marble copies, executed in the first days of the Christian Era, of bronze masterpieces of the most glorious of the great sculptors, except Phidias. Praxiteles, Myron and Polycletus are all represented by superb copies.

You enter the Sculpture Galleries through the gateway of the gracious little pavilion, called il Padiglione (101), and ascend the first flight of the beautiful and well-named Scala Nobile, which takes you into the Sala a Croce Greca (100). As everyone visits the Sculpture Galleries, I shall say little of the contents of its various chambers. From this you pass through the Sala Rotonda (99) into the Hall of the Muses (98), and thence into the Sala degli Animali, the Hall of the Animals (92). So far you have no choice, but here you can either walk straight into the court of the Belvedere, in whose portico are four little cabinets (p, q, r, and s), containing the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, the so-called Antinous, and Canova’s immeasurably inferior statues: or you can turn to your left into the Galleria delle Statue, Gallery of the Statues, which contains, among its other priceless treasures, the Ariadne, the Torso of Hercules, the Apollo Sauroctonus, and the Genius of the Vatican; and the Cabinetto delle Maschere, Cabinet of the Masks (97), which has a balcony to which the public are not admitted outside; it opens off the Gallery of the Statues (93); the Sala dei Busti, the Hall of the Busts (95), is at the end. From thence you pass to three little chambers called the Vestibule of the Torso (87), the Vestibule of the Vase (88), and the Vestibule of the Meleager (89); and the Museo Chiaramonti, a hall of interminable length, stocked with the worst statues in the Vatican Museum--those, in fact, with which poor Pius VII. had to console himself when Napoleon took all the best ones away. Near the entrance is the door which admits to the Giardino della Pigna (79), which is now entirely closed to the public; but is interesting as containing the bronze fir-cone or Pigna, and the bronze peacocks which adorned the fountain of the _atrium_ of Old St. Peter’s. In the small rooms running along the north side of the Garden of the Pigna are the Egyptian Museum, formed almost entirely of Egyptian objects found in Rome.

When you regain the entrance to the Sculpture Gallery, or rather, when you come back to the landing of the Scala Nobile, you ascend higher. First you will want to look into the delightful little Sala della Biga, which occupies the upper half of the pavilion through which you enter. It gets its name from the beautiful, though so much restored, marble chariot which stands in the centre. All round this room are exquisitely beautiful statues, several of them amongst the finest in the collection.

A side-door admits to the Etruscan Museum, the celebrated Museo Gregoriano, founded by Gregory XVI., which contains the most precious collection of ancient Etruscan remains in the world. It is mainly over the Egyptian Museum; and its display of Greek vases, mostly from the tombs of the perished Etruscan city of Vulci, is unrivalled. It had the choice over other museums: in drinking bowls especially it is unapproachable.

Between the Hall of the Biga and the Etruscan Museum is the entrance to the _Galleria dei Candelabri_: a series of six halls, opening into the _Galleria degli Arazzi_, which terminates in the _Galleria Geografica_ (the Gallery of the Maps), which is five hundred feet long. The _Arazzi_ are, of course, the tapestries manufactured in Flanders from the designs of Raffaelle and his pupils, and the _Galleria Geografica_ is part of the Pope’s own apartments, to which it is very difficult to gain admission. It leads, in fact, into the “Hall of Papal Audiences”; and these galleries between them constitute the upper story which covers the whole length of the Long Gallery of the Vatican Library--the whole length from Innocent VIII.’s Villa to the Palace.

I have now mentioned all the most important chapels, courts, staircases, halls and chambers in the Vatican which the public has any reasonable hope of visiting, or any object in visiting. The rest of the rooms which go to make up the thousand rooms of Baedeker, or the seven thousand of Tuker and Malleson, or the eleven thousand of Murray and Hare, are occupied by the large population, estimated at two thousand and odd persons, inhabiting the Vatican, and having for a parish church the Cappella Paolina. There still remain, however, a few buildings outside the actual gates of the palace, but within the Vatican precincts: such as the Palace of the Holy Office (the Inquisition), and the Armeria, which, with Castel Gandolfo and a few palaces and churches in Rome, constitute the Pope’s kingdom.

The Mint, or Zecca, which, as I have said, was taken possession of by the Italian Government, is not difficult to see; it is open daily, but to see the workshops one must apply to the Director for an order.

hand contains the apartments of the Pope. _From Pistolesi’s “Il Vaticano.”_]

above the Colonnade, is the Palace of the Vatican, the right wing of which contains the apartments of the Pope.]