Roma - Part 2

It doesnt seem right to write about Rome and not comment on the Sistine chapel so here is what I thought. To get to the Sistine chapel in the Vatican museum you have to pass through almost two hours worth of lavishy decorated corridors and rooms with frescoes, paintings, statues, furniture and tapestry. The journey ends in the Sistine chapel which is a huge rectangular room with all its walls and ceiling covered in frescoes. The frescoes are quite magnificant although the most famous sections on the ceiling done by Michalangelo are so far above its hard to make out the details. Nevertheless you stand in awe of it all shoulder to shoulder to hundreds of other people doing the same. There is so much to see in such detail you can really spend hours in that room but its impossible to do one because there is limited seating and the other because of the sheer number of people coming through to the room.

One thing which Pramod and I both couldn't understand was the fact that almost every person in the room (except us of course) were taking photos of the frescoes with flash repeatedly despite the signs forbidding that very act. With the thousands of people that visit the Sistine chapel everyday if everyone did that all those priceless frecoes will not be around for much longer. There were guards in the room, but they seem to be more concerned with keeping people quiet rather than warning them against the use of flashes. We found this attitude quite common throughout Italy, where staff were too busy socialising to enforce the rules of the gallery/museum they are looking after. It's such a pity because they dont seem to either not understand the significance of what they are looking after, or simply don't care. I'm not sure which is worse.