We’d never been to Rome unless you consider landing at the airport, picking up your luggage, then boarding a bus to take you to the coast counts as visiting a city and, quite frankly, if you do then you’re a weirdo. That previous not-a-visit to Rome had occurred when we’d taken a cruise aboard Royal Princess several years earlier and the end of this second Mediterranean cruise with Princess Cruises would also have included a not-a-vist to the Italian capital had we not shifted our flight home to a little later in the day and booked a disembarkation tour with the cruise line.
Cruise lines will typically offer transfers to and from airports (and sometimes city centres) for passengers and, because making money is where it’s at in this crazy world of capitalism, they will often include one or two disembarkation tour options for those who want one last chance to stretch out their holiday; your luggage stays on the bus while you see some highlights and visit one or two things ahead of a drop-off at the airport and the crushing onset of post-cruise blues. For our Emerald Princess cruise the disembarkation tour would mainly be a visit to St Peter’s Basilica with a short drive to indicate other points of interest. We figured that this would give us a good chance to get a feel for the capital city and we do like a good nose at churches.
Early on the Saturday morning we took a single photo of Civitavecchia from our balcony and bid our floating home for the week a sad farewell.
Vatican City, Rome
We had a very entertaining drive into Rome from the port thanks to a guide who wasn’t afraid to drop into his narrative stories about corruption in the country and throw some serious shade towards the Catholic church specifically and religion in general.
With it being early on a Saturday there wasn’t a huge amount of traffic around and we made good time to a parking garage which was situated about ten minutes walk to the south of St Peter’s Square. As we rounded the curved colonnades that embrace the square we got a good view through them of the obelisk that had been taken from Egypt by the emperor Caligula as well as the two fountains which make up the only structures inside the vast space of the square.
St Peter’s Square is inside the Vatican City enclave and you can tell when you’ve left Rome and entered it because there’s a small metal barrier to walk past. Before we did that, though, there was the small matter of ensuring that everybody who needed to pee do it because there wouldn’t be another chance for a while so we were led a short walk to a small road called Via Rusticucci where there was a large souvenir shop, Vacanze Romane, inside which were toilets. We waited outside until all those who’d needed to relieve themselves had done so and after all those who’d decided they might buy some things and to hell with everyone who actually wanted to see the historical sights had been told to not be so selfish and ushered away from the shop.
St Peter’s Square
We crossed the line that formed the boundary with the outside world and slid into the smallest sovereign state in the world and St Peter’s Square. I’ll skip over my customary rant about squares not being squares and merely point out that this one is shaped like a trapezoid having intimate relationships with an oval. I’m not going to pretend to have a clue what went through the mind of the architect.
The view was dominated by the basilica directly ahead of us and those doric colonnades radiating out from it. St Peter’s Square was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini who was not only a leading architect and someone with an unhealthy obsession with sexy ovals but also a sculptor of some reknown, accredited with creating the Baroque style. A church had been in the location of the basilica since the fourth century CE and the obelisk had been moved into position in front of it in the sixteenth century but the design of the square and redesign of the basilica didn’t start until the seventeenth.
In front of the northern colonnades were the X-ray machines for bags and metal detectors to scan people and with there being a grand total of two of them operating there was already a reasonable queue ahead of us to get to the basilica before we joined the snaking line and shuffled along as well. To be fair, we didn’t have too long a wait with most people sensibly making sure that belts and phones and anything else likely to trigger the metal detector was removed. We passed the time in the queue by taking the piss out of the young couple eating each other’s faces in front of us and by enjoying the views of the artistic additions to the colonnades as well as closer looks at the obelisk and fountains. The fountain nearest us was the older of the two, this being the Carlo Maderno-designed one dating to 1613; its counterpart to the south was designed to match it in 1675 by Bernini.
Once through the scanners we were inside the northern colonnades and simply followed them around to the entrance to the basilica. This granted us our first look at a member of the Swiss Guard, the military force whose main strength in battle is causing their enemies to argue amongst themselves whether it’s honourable to attack people in their pyjamas.
Passing a statue of St Paul (one of St Peter stands on the exiting side of the basilica) there was one more checkpoint to ensure that people were suitably dressed – knees and shoulders must be covered because large, complex joints of the human body are disrespectful (no, I don’t know why either, but I do follow the rules) – before we gathered at the Maderno Façade which you’ve probably already guessed was designed by Maderno and fronts the basilica.
St Peter’s Basilica
The morning had been a little overcast with storm clouds present over the dock in Civitavecchia but by the time we’d reached Rome the sky was clear and the temperature was warming up quite a lot. That’s right: I’m British and I’m talking about the weather. Standing in front of the façade where the strengthening sun was being reflected off every stone surface made the transition inside the huge church that much more pleasant and as our eyes adjusted to the relative gloom of the building’s interior our relief at being in a cooler environment itself transitioned into one of quiet awe.
St Peter’s Basilica is the largest church in the world, with a capacity estimated at around sixty thousand people. Thanks to some terrible photography by me that doesn’t capture enough people in the framing against the ornate decorations of the roof you can’t quite get a grasp for the scale of the building in the photos below but to give you some idea, wherever you see writing in gold around the dome or at the top of pillars those letters are 1.4 metres high (or four and a half feet in quaint measurements); that’s about the size of Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi.
Once we’d taken our eyes away from the cavernous surroundings our guide began his circuit of the interior of the basilica. One of the first congestion points was at a statue held behind protective glass (following an attack on it in 1972). This was Michelangelo’s Pietà, an early piece from him and the only one he ever signed (after reportedly hearing some people associate it with another artist).
As we were led through St Peter’s Basilica we passed numerous other statues, many of them founders of religious orders or saints. Many former popes are interred at the basilica and it reportedly stands on the site of the burial spot of St Peter, regarded as the first pope, who was allegedly crucified upside down during the reign of Nero.
A couple of the sculptures in the basilica stood out due to just how different they looked. The first of these was the statue of St Peter Enthroned, notable not only for its black marble but also for its foot which was worn down from the act of pilgrims touching or kissing it over the centuries. As someone who’d just come off a cruise ship the thought of doing the same without some hand sanitiser nearby gave me the chills.
The second sculpture to catch the eye was the tomb of Pope Alexander VII, expertly incorporating a doorway beneath its location into the design by Bernini. It’s not hard to see why this artwork stands out as you spot Death apparently caught up in the red marble cloth supported by the four female figures around the tomb and offering a shiny new egg timer to whoever frees him from the embarrassing position.
When we’d first entered the basilica we’d all spotted the tall, dark canopy-like structure directly ahead of us down the centre of the nave. Our guided exploration of the site eventually brought us to it. This was the Baldacchino, the pavilion standing over the spot of St Peter’s tomb and the high altar of the basilica, cast in bronze and with instantly eye-catching elements such as the spiralling, helical columns. St Peter’s Baldachin (to give it its English name) stands at over twenty eight metres in height or approximately twenty Snookis if you’re adopting my new measurement system.
Our tour guide then brought us along to one of the pieces of artwork on the walls of St Peter’s Basilica. This was the Altar of Transfiguration and it was here that we were told why there was no restriction on not only taking photographs in the basilica but also using flash if we wanted (top tip: don’t; the place is too large for your puny flash to have much of an impact). Originally painted in 1520 by Raphael, what you now see in St Peter’s, like almost all the art on the walls, is a mosaic reproduction and if you visit the basilica then get up as close as you can to these works of art to truly appreciate the skill involved in making them.
That mostly brought our time inside the basilica to an end. We continued with our anticlockwise route around its interior still wowed by the scale of the building, still admiring the artistry in both the decoration and the architecture, and stopping briefly to admire the coat of arms on the floor for Pope John Paul II as well as letting a wedding party past who were about to witness a marriage due to take place in one of the chapels. I imagine that’s the sort of thing you do for bragging rights in Rome.
A longer visit would have been good, especially one to take in the view from the dome, but the time we had in the basilica was absolutely fine for a disembarkation excursion. St Peter’s is very impressive and well worth a visit.
Concluding The Disembarkation Tour Of Rome
We emerged back into the sunlight of Rome and the Vatican City beside a guard post for the formidable Swiss Guard. I wouldn’t want to attack them. The southern side of the basilica had a statue of St Peter to match the position of the one of St Paul we’d seen on the way in. We had the opportunity to see more of the basilica frontage and a view of the obelisk with the Bernini fountain this time around. We were also shown a marker point on the ground that marks the focus of the arcs of colonnades. When standing at that spot it appears that the colonnades consist of a single row of columns instead of the four that really make them up; it’s more interesting than it sounds but you’ll have to use your imagination because I didn’t take a photo as I didn’t want to hold everyone up shuffling along into position to witness the spectacle. My consideration is your loss.
We wandered back to the bus after a revisit to the souvenir shop for further peeing opportunities and a short chance to buy some gifts to take home then headed off for what was then supposed to be a drive to the Colosseum for a photo stop. Supposed to be. Unfortunately, our disembarkation in Rome coincided with a marathon taking place in the city which in turn meant that roads were closed and the best our driver could do was a slow roll past the impressive-looking building. With it being on the other side of the bus to us, though, I wasn’t even able to grab a picture of it through the window. In fact, the only photo I took during the period on the bus prior to the airport drop-off was of the Pyramid of Cestius, a style of architecture I definitely wasn’t expecting to see in the city. It was built as a tomb in around 12 BCE and I’d give you its height in Snookis but I suspect you know that that joke has run its course by now.
And that was what we saw of Rome for this tour at the end of our cruise. We didn’t see much, but what we saw we liked a lot and we saw a lot of evidence of other things we wanted to see in the city. We shall have to return to the Italian capital for a substantially longer visit at some point and in that respect you can easily say that this tour was well worth the money.
Home
With a few hours before our flight back to the UK we had a chance to sample some Italian beer in Italy, something we’d not done before but the sort of thing we like to do whenever we travel. When in Rome and all that.
A short and uneventful flight back left us with one final, late summer evening view from Heathrow airport to mark the end of the holiday.
