Not content with having had a semi-personal audience with the Pope the previous day, my companion is hell-bent on seeing St Peter. So back to the Vatican we trek, and since we’re there bright and early we get in without having to face the massive queues that form later on.

The Basílica is erected on top of earlier churches, on top of the burial place of Peter, Jesus’s main man and preferred apostle, the first Pope, and gatekeeper to Heaven if you believe the marketing hype (hence the papal insignia is a pair of crossed keys – one main and one spare, presumably…). Interestingly, basilicas where court buildings in Ancient Rome, and all cities had one. I guess the reasoning is that when you’re visiting his grave you’re also being given a once-over ahead of Judgment Day. If people knew that they might not be as keen to get inside… but inside they go, and so do we, taking in mosaics and statuary and relics and gold filigree and marble and whatnot.

The Pope’s not home, but there’s no denying his work place is impressive. Especially if you climb the cupola, which we did. It’s some 500 steps of ever narrower, claustrophobia- and cardiac arrest-inducing stairs before you reach the viewing platform at the top (presumably unique in that you can really see the whole country from it). Once there it wasn’t the view that captured my imagination, however, but the candle holders on the outside of the curving roof. Whose job did it use to be to climb around on the outside of the dome to change and light candles, and how hard do you have to believe in God before you’re willing to take it?

See the candle-holders? No rest for the wick-ed…

Leaving the lofty heights behind, we venture on to the Vatican museum, which houses two millennia’s worth of art. This one time only we give in to temptation and buy tickets that allow us to jump the queue that snakes around the wall of the Papal state (Note to Trump: when your wall is built, headhunt the Indian gentlemen who offer these golden tickets outside Pope’s Place – they will earn you (another) fortune!).

Inside it’s equally crowded, but here the orderly lines are abandoned in favour of tour groups that move like solid masses of flesh, their guides herding them like human-sized ducklings trained to follow a brightly-coloured piece of cloth on a stick. It’s tiresome, but the art is fabulous, there’s no denying that.

When we finally reach the Sixtine Chapel, the guards and signposts have the audacity to claim it’s a holy place and that photos aren’t allowed. I figure they lost the right to claim that when they started charging approximately a gazillion visitors per day close to 40€ per pop to see the place, so I took plenty – more than I would have done otherwise.

I’m going to assume you knew Michelangelo painted the ceiling, but what you possibly didn’t know (and they still don’t tell you there now) is that he painted the shroud that God is flying around on when he imbues Adam with life (see centre of the pic above) so that its outline is precisely that of a human brain! This fact was only brought to light by a neurosurgeon relatively recently, when he noticed its undeniable similarities. Imagine that! What a gutsy move: 400 years ago, in the very heart of Christendom, this man dared defy dogma and pointed out (albeit very subtly) that the brain, rather than any deity, is what make humans unique! It’s like The Da Vinci Code, only real, and better.

Damning evidence?

Once we’d dreamed of Heaven, we land in the gutter. Or at least we try. More specifically, I want to see the Cloaca Maxima, the sewage system created by the Romans and still in use today. The Atlas Obscura mentions it, but glosses over two things: it’s damned difficult to find (we try in several places, and the only thing to come of it is a very specific joke (Why did the chicken cross the road? There might be a cloaca!)) and when we finally do find it we discover it is very decidedly closed to the public. Shit.

One room apt. Airy. Large bath.

At least we got to see even more of the town this way. Interestingly, the tradition of painting walls and ceilings lives on today. There are stencils hidden here and there – some funny, some vulgar, many surprising. Apparently youngsters make them and/or collect them – something I thought was a useless fact picked up in the latest Spider-man movie; and yet here I am, Marvel-ling at them.

There’s street art of other kinds, too. Not graffiti, thankfully, but more talented offerings. Any city that has thousand-year old statues in Renaissance settings is doing something right; my favourite is the statue of Marcus Aurelius a-horse in a square designed by our old friend Michelangelo, but there is other stuff on display, as well.

But that’s a story for another day.