April 26
The Vatican

The largest cathedral on Earth is laid out in the shape - you are not going to believe this - of a Latin Cross. But what an enormous cross! It is as large as two football fields (American football) from front to back. Every niche contains objects designed by the greatest artists in history. Among them are Michelangelo, da Vinci, Bernini and Raphael. As the hordes of tourists entered the church, the cavernous main floor seemed to absorb us. Once inside, there was plenty of room to stroll around and admire the sculptures, paintings, and architecture. The dome itself was deliberately designed by Michelangelo to be just one meter smaller than the great Pantheon. Probably the most interesting (to us anyway) sculpture was the monument to Alexander VII by Bernini with its half-hidden skeleton holding a symbolic hourglass. The brass sculpture of St. Peter himself, who is by all accounts actually buried beneath the cathedral, had his left foot nearly polished away by millions of faithful who routinely rub it "for luck."

Although the Sistine Chapel is right next to St. Peter's on the map of the Vatican, getting to it was a bit of a challenge. A 15-minute walk around the outside walls of the complex brought us (after turning around a few times and then asking directions) to the entrance of the Vatican Museum. The museo itself was worth the price of admission - a very long, linear exhibition of treasures and trinkets offered as gifts to Popes throughout history.

And then there was the chapel, with its amazing frescoed ceiling and front wall by Michelangelo. It took him two years to finish just the ceiling! While standing in the center of the room, gazing straight up at God's fingertip from which humanity was bestowed upon us, I couldn't help but ponder the question that must occur to each and every visitor to that amazing tesseract of civilization: How did Michelangelo endure two full years of the ribbing he must have gotten from those Swiss Guard fellows who, to this day, still have to wear those funny clown suits designed by the same guy who painted the ceiling on his back?

"Hey Mike, you lying down on the job again?" Or even better, "You know Mike, there's only one other profession where you can make a living in that position." Then there's the ever popular, "You've been paintin' that one finger an awfully long time!"

Hey, all I know is twenty years later when Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment on the front wall behind the altar, he was in a much grumpier mood. He must have been out of his skin by that time.

On our walk back from the Vatican, we made one last stop at the building that is, in many ways, just the opposite of the Sistine Chapel. Whereas the chapel is a relatively unremarkable building that has been rendered special by its ostentatious internal decorations, the Pantheon is a special place because of its humility coupled with the greatness of its architecture. If you haven't seen it in person, it may seem strange to refer to it as humble. It was, after all, the largest dome ever built by humans for 1,500 years (when someone built a larger, tackier one with artificial turf inside, I think). Its very name has become a superlative over the centuries. Inside, however, there are no brightly-colored frescoes on the ceiling, no famous statuary portraying Madonna and Child, just a searingly bright oval of light cast onto one of the walls by the sun shining through the 30-foot round hole (oculus) in the center of the dome.

On the outside, the structure seems to bow down to those who enter its doors, making it appear much smaller than it actually is. Even the Latin inscription carved over the entrance is the essence of humility, paying tribute as it does to the man who built the original structure on that same site, a man named M. Agrippa, who otherwise would have been largely forgotten by history since he had nothing to do with the Pantheon itself. And yet, the inscription immortalizes him by proclaiming simply, "M. Agrippa made this."

Our last full day in Italy was also the 30th anniversary of our wedding day. Kathy and I began the celebration by toasting each other while sitting at a table in Piazza della Rotunda, directly in front of the Pantheon. After showering and putting on a beautiful dress (actually, I wore pants and a tie), we continued late into the night at a fancy ristorante close to the hotel. Before this trip, thirty years had seemed like a very long time to us. But that night, after some amazing Italian food and a few glasses of vino, we began to see the connections in all of this. Compared to the 3,000 years of Italian history whose artifacts we had witnessed, our 30 years is just a tiny drop, still connected to all the other drops to form the fathomless layers and eddies of time. Over cheese and dessert, we clinked our espresso cups and decided that, in a certain sense, M. Agrippa made this too.