Rome Post #4

Hi All,

I want to take a minute to tell you about a very neat tour that Kristina and I had the opportunity to go on in the Vatican called the Scavi Tour. Essentially, it was a tour of the excavations of the Necropolis underneath St. Peter's Basilica, including the tomb of St. Peter himself! Unfortunately, Kristina's body didn't agree with being underground for this tour, so she wasn't able to go through with it, but she's okay now, was just a bit shaken up at the time. As expected for an excavation site, the passageways were pretty small, and it was extremely humid underground, so it's definitely not for everyone. I wasn't going to continue with it either, but she insisted that I should, so I did. No pictures were allowed, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but it was pretty cool all in all!



This is my ticket for the Scavi Tour. I'm still not sure by what streak of luck I was able to get one, as people normally reserve their spot on this tour like 5 months in advance! A friend mentioned it to me about a week before we left to Europe, so I sent the email asking if space was available on a whim, signing it with the phrase "God Bless," and what do you know, they had an opening! Pretty smart huh! :)

This tour really flies underneath the radar; very few people even know it exists! As a result, I wasn't exactly sure where we had to go to get into it, so I decided I'd ask these fashionable young fellows! No, they're not street performers, they're members of the Swiss Guard, the sworn protectors of the Vatican, clad in the traditional uniforms designed by Michelangelo himself! Every member of the Swiss Guard has to be male, unmarried, within a certain age, of Swiss heritage, and trained by the Swiss Army. Quite a job! Luckily, they were friendly, not like those stuck up guards in front of Buckingham Palace who won't talk to you, and they showed me where to go. Kristina calls this picture, "Ryan and his boys."

Me in front of the "Ufficio Scavi," or Office of Excavations, awaiting our tour guide for the tour to begin. Kristina is here too, in fact she took the picture! It was actually totally a bummer, because she was really excited for the tour, and we honestly didn't think twice about going underground beforehand. She was making Willy Wonka jokes the whole time, totally fine for the above-ground part of the tour!

The tour ended up in the Vatican Grottoes, one level underneath the main floor St. Peter's Basilica, where many of the former Popes are entombed. We had visited this area earlier in the day, and snapped this picture before we realized we weren't supposed to, as this was a very sacred place.


The tour was very cool, and in it we walked on what was originally the ground level of Rome in the 1st century AD, through what was essentially a graveyard (Necroplis in Greek means "City of the Dead") I saw a number of mausoleums from the early Christian times, which now serve as the foundations for the Basilica, and one of the corners of St. Peter's Tomb. Pope Pius XII decided to excavate underneath the Basilica in order to confirm that St. Peter, the first Pope of the Catholic Church and one of Jesus' 12 Apostles, was buried here. In doing so, they found his tomb, hiding underneat several altars that had been built over it throughout the ages, but no remains inside. Incidentally, the bones believed to be St. Peter's remains were found OUTSIDE the tomb, just to the right of it, in a sealed cavity referred to as the "Grafitti Wall." Apparently Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, had the remains moved there in there around the 1500's to better preserve them. While there is no way to be sure that they are actually Peter's bones, the official stance of the Catholic Church is that we BELIEVE they are because there is enough evidence to suggest that they really are. This evidence includes the facts that, among other things:
1) Traces of the soil from within the tomb were found on the bones.
2) Carbon dating of the bones shows them to be from a man who lived in the first century AD.
3) There was a shred of red cloth from Constantine's era that at that time only Emperors or people of great significance would've been allowed to wear, let alone be burried wearing.
4) There were no feet bones (For those of you who don't know, St. Peter was crucified upside-down, and in Roman times, to remove the body from the Cross, the feet were often chopped off!).
5) There was an incomplete inscription found with the remains stating "Peter is here." Pretty amazing really.

I actually got to see the bones, nineteen of them, each preserved in a plexiglass case, laying in the original spot in which they were found. Crazy huh!

So that was the Scavi Tour, what an adventure. If only Kristina could've joined me! Hope you enjoy my description, and if you're headed to the Vatican anytime soon (actually, anytime 5 months or so from now...) and not claustrophobic, you should check it out yourself!

Thanks all, more from Rome to come!

Love,

Ry