March 17th

March 17^th

Today before traveling by bus to Pisa and then Florence I visited the Sistine chapel and the Vatican Museums. Michelangelo was designing the tomb for the pope when the pope decided that instead he wanted to have the ceiling of the Sistine chapel frescoed. Michelangelo did not want to fresco a ceiling he wanted to finish the tomb but the pope said you will paint the Sistine chapel or you will not finish my tomb. Michelangelo was infuriated but set to painting the ceiling. Michelangelo never frescoed anything before and had to hire a man to teach him. When the hired man and Michelangelo got in a fight Michelangelo started to teach himself. 250 years after the Sistine chapel was painted an explosion rocked the town. This explosion caused a chunk of the fresco to crumble; even though a piece of the work is missing it is left that way in order to maintain authenticity. Michelangelo finished the ceiling spectacularly but in the process of completing it he gained bad eyesight because he painted from 4 feet away paint constantly fell into his eyes. That was not the only disappointing outcome on behalf of Michelangelo but also the Pope died and so he could not complete the tomb after all.

The Vatican museums were very interesting but I do not think they were half as interesting as the Sistine chapel and so I shant talk about it. The rest of the day was spent driving along the Aurelian way and the Tyrrhenian coast which is a fancy name for the Mediterranean. We visited Pisa and then went on to Florence which is a city in the province of Tuscana.