Vatican Museums:Home to the world famous great works of art & historical artefacts-Sistine Chapel ceilings & altars decorated by the master sculptor Michelangelo,Raphael Rooms,awesome frescoes & Pinacoteca painting gallery.

On 8/9/22 ,We went on a panoramic tour of the Vatican museum & were spell-bound by the amazing display of beautiful paintings & sculptures .The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling & altar wall decorated by Michelangelo,Four Raphael rooms(decorated by Raphael) & Pinacoteca painting gallery are a great treat to the eyes.The various galleries were awesome & the epitome of excellence in art .The Sistine Chapel is a sight to behold & cherish the memories for ever.The museum has amazing collections which are all unique & interesting.The place is so huge that I would recommend going with a tour or getting an audio guide so that you can make the most of your trip.

The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most renowned Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display,and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums. There are 24 galleries, or rooms, in total, with the Sistine Chapel, notably, being the last room visited within the Museum.

History :
The Vatican Museums trace their origin to one marble sculpture, purchased in the 16th century: Laocoön and His Sons was discovered on 14 January 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Pope Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo, who were working at the Vatican, to examine the discovery.On their recommendation, the Pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. The Pope put the sculpture, which represents the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by giant serpents, on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery.Benedict XIV founded the Museum Christianum, and some of the Vatican collections formed the Lateran Museum, which Pius IX founded by decree in 1854. The museums celebrated their 500th anniversary in October 2006 by permanently opening the excavations of a Vatican Hill necropolis to the public. On 1 January 2017, Barbara Jatta became the Director of the Vatican Museums, replacing Antonio Paolucci who had been director since 2007.

Pinacoteca Vaticana(art gallery):
The art gallery was housed in the Borgia Apartment until Pius XI ordered construction of a dedicated building. The new building, designed by Luca Beltrami, was inaugurated on 27 October 1932. The museum’s paintings include:

-Giotto: Stefaneschi Triptych
-Olivuccio di Ciccarello: Opere di Misericordia
-Filippo Lippi: Marsuppini Coronation
-Giovanni Bellini: Pietà
-Melozzo da Forlì: Sixtus IV Appointing Platina as Prefect of the Vatican Library
-Pietro Perugino: Decemviri Altarpiece and San Francesco al Prato Resurrection
-Leonardo da Vinci: Saint Jerome in the Wilderness
-Raphael: Madonna of Foligno, Oddi Altarpiece and Transfiguration
-Titian: Frari Madonna
-Antonio da Correggio: Christ in Glory
-Paolo Veronese: The Vision of Saint Helena
-Caravaggio: The Entombment of Christ
-Domenichino, The Last Communion of Saint Jerome
-Nicolas Poussin, The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus
-Jan Matejko: Sobieski at Vienna
-Collection of Modern Religious Art
-The Collection of Modern Religious Art was added in 1973 and houses paintings and sculptures from such artists as Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso.

Sculpture museums:
The group of museums includes several sculpture museums surrounding the Cortile del Belvedere. These are the Museo Gregoriano Profano, with classical sculpture & others as below :

Museo Pio-Clementino:

A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste (Palestrina)

It was constructed c. 120 BC in the Museo Pio-Clementino.The museum takes its name from two popes:Clement XIV, who established the museum.Pius VI, who brought it to completion.Clement XIV came up with the idea of creating a new museum in Innocent VIII’s Belvedere Palace & started the refurbishment work.Clement XIV founded the Museo Pio-Clementino in 1771; it originally contained artworks of antiquity & the Renaissance.The museum & collection were enlarged by Clement’s successor Pius VI.Today, the museum houses works of Greek & Roman sculpture.

Some notable galleries are as follows:

Octagonal Court (aka Belvedere Courtyard and Cortile delle Statue): this was where some of the first ancient classical statues in the papal collections were first displayed. Some of the most famous pieces, the Apollo of the Belvedere and Laocoön and His Sons have been here since the early 1500s.
Sala Rotonda: shaped like a miniature Pantheon, the room has impressive ancient mosaics on the floors, and ancient statues lining the perimeter, including a gilded bronze statue of Hercules and the Braschi Antinous.
Greek Cross Gallery (Sala a Croce Greca): with the porphyry sarcophagi of Constance and Saint Helena, daughter and mother of Constantine the Great.
Gallery of the Statues (Galleria delle Statue): as its name implies, holds various important statues, including Sleeping Ariadne and the bust of Menander. It also contains the Barberini Candelabra.
Gallery of the Busts (Galleria dei Busti) Many ancient busts are displayed.
Cabinet of the Masks (Gabinetto delle Maschere). The name comes from the mosaic on the floor of the gallery, found in Villa Adriana, which shows ancient theater masks. Statues are displayed along the walls, including the Three Graces.
Sala delle Muse: houses the statue group of Apollo and the nine muses, uncovered in a Roman villa near Tivoli in 1774, as well as statues by important ancient Greek or Roman sculptors. The centerpiece is the Belvedere Torso, revered by Michelangelo and other Renaissance men.
Sala degli Animali: so named because of the many ancient statues of animals.

The Sistine Chapel (Italian: Cappella Sistine):

It is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, in Vatican City and the official residence of the pope. Originally known as the Cappella Magna (‘Great Chapel’), the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV , who had it built between 1473 and 1481. Since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious& functionary papal activity. Today, it is the site of the papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected. The fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescoes that decorate the interior, most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling &The Last Judgment, both by Michelangelo.
During the reign of Sixtus IV, a team of Renaissance painters that included Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, created a series of frescos depicting the Life of Moses &the Life of Christ. These paintings were completed in 1482,&on 15 August 1483 Sixtus IV celebrated the first mass in the Sistine Chapel for the Feast of the Assumption, at which ceremony the chapel was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.Between 1508 and 1512, under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted the chapel’s ceiling, a project which changed the course of Western art &is regarded as one of the major artistic accomplishments of human civilization. In a different political climate, after the Sack of Rome, he returned &between 1535 and 1541, painted The Last Judgment for Popes Clement VII &Paul III.The fame of Michelangelo’s paintings has drawn multitudes of visitors to the chapel ever since they were revealed five hundred years ago.

The four Raphael Rooms (Italian: Stanze di Raffaello) form a suite of reception rooms in the Apostolic Palace, now part of the Vatican Museums, in Vatican City. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome. The Stanze, as they are commonly called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II. He commissioned Raphael, then a relatively young artist from Urbino, and his studio in 1508 or 1509 to redecorate the existing interiors of the rooms entirely. After the death of Julius in 1513, with two rooms frescoed, Pope Leo X continued the program. Following Raphael’s death in 1520, his assistants Gianfrancesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino del Colle finished the project with the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino.

The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group :

It has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures ever since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican museums where it remains. It is very likely the same statue that was praised in the highest terms by the main Roman writer on art, Pliny the Elder. The figures are near life-size and the group is a little over 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in height, showing the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents.

THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE :

The spiral staircase is an amazing structure being a wonderful experience for visitors!

The cool drinking water supply is quite a convenience for the visitors to the Vatican city!

My dear readers may kindly point out any incorrect information in my above writeup needing any corrections! I am truly indebted to Wikipedia & for the invaluable information on the subject !Happy Reading !