[PHOTOS] Vatican Museums calmly reopen for Romans

The Vatican Museums, among the most visited in the world before the coronavirus pandemic, reopened their doors on Monday for the almost exclusive pleasure of the Romans, exempt from playing elbows with foreign tourists.

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The heavy doors opened Monday morning to let in, among the first, Martina Sorrenti and Vincenzo Spina, tourist guides in need of art, come for their own pleasure.

“In recent years, the museum has been our second home. Today we are rediscovering a place that has become slightly hazy in our memories, ”Vincenzo said.

On the way to contemplate the sumptuous Roman copy in marble of the Greek priest Laocoon and his two sons attacked by snakes, discovered in the 16th century in excavations. The two guides also counted on the most visited monument in Rome, the Roman amphitheater of the Colosseum, also reopened like most cultural sites in Italy, which decided to relax a little the restrictions linked to the epidemic of the coronavirus .

“Today is a party,” exclaimed museum director Barbara Jatta, welcoming journalists into almost empty hallways.

The hostess recommends a stop in the former Borgia apartments, the private residence of Pope Alexander VI, who died in 1503. “You enter an admirable 15th century atmosphere”, she boasts, “before it was hidden by tarpaulins ”.

During the months of closure, the Sistine Chapel, a masterpiece of Renaissance art known in particular for its vault painted by Michelangelo, was not only entitled to an annual check of the condition of its ceilings, but its murals have been subjected to a major dust-removal operation. On Monday, it could be admired almost empty, something unthinkable in normal times.

The huge palace is subdivided into many thematic museums housing Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman, Christian collections, although visitors tend to favor Renaissance works by Raphael and Michelangelo.

Papal finances at half mast

The reopening of the Vatican Museums (Monday to Saturday, by reservation required) will also bring a little breath of fresh air to Pope Francis’ sagging finances.

In 2019, the museums had attracted seven million visitors, generating – according to unofficial estimates – around 100 million euros in ticket sales, not including the lucrative income from its shops and guided tours.

However, over the past 12 months, their doors have been completely closed almost half the time, from March 9 to June 1 during the total containment of Italy, then from the beginning of November to February 1.

Between these two periods of silence, the usual crowds of foreign tourists were already largely absent from its seven kilometers of galleries leading to the jewel of the papal museums, the Sistine Chapel.

The revenues of the Vatican Museums are crucial for the world headquarters of the Catholic Church, which has not laid off any of its 5,000 or so employees and has no unemployment insurance fund.

Museums alone employ 700 people, including 300 caretakers, but also art restorers and highly qualified researchers who watch over its rich collections.

The reopening comes in the more serene context of the vaccination campaign which is in full swing in the small state.

“I had to take the opportunity,” said Sanon Bertin, a priest who has lived in Rome for six years, but had never been there, on Monday. Father Richard Corbon, who accompanied him, was delighted to visit a place “free from the pressure of tourists”, where “the employees seem almost more numerous than the visitors! “

If the rooms welcomed on average some 23,000 visitors per day in 2019, Barbara Jatta hopes to attract “several thousand people” per day in the coming weeks, because “it is really the time to come and see the Pope’s museums” .