Sistine chapel tour: the sistine chapel frescoed by Michelangelo

SISTINE CHAPEL TOUR: THE SISTINE CHAPEL FRESCOED BY MICHELANGELO

In 1505 Michelangelo Buonarroti was commissioned by pope Julius II to repaint the ceiling of the sistine Chapel in the vatican. The central portion of the vaulted celing illustrates nine scenes from the book of Genesis, from the origin of the universe, through the creation of Adam and Eve, and ending with the story of Noah.

Depictions of prophets and sibyls as awell as a variety of other images taken directly from both the Bible and classical mithology surround the narrative panels. Michelangelo completed these wonderful frescoes between 1508 and 1512. Celebrating the resurrection of Christ, " The Last Judgement " was executed over the altar wall of the sistine chapel between the years 1535-1541. A great travel writer, H.V. Morton, once said that " A visit to Rome is not a matter of discovery, but of remembrance ". That's what the Sistine Chapel does to visitors: it touches deeply rootedcultural and spiritual memories and intuitions.

People are awestruck in the Sistine Chapel because, through the frescoes and what they arouse deep within us, this has become another borderland between the human and the divine. It's called the " Sistine Chapel" in honor of its builder, pope Sixtus IV, a franciscan memeber of the della Rovere, who sat on Peter's chair from 1471 to 1484. There's nothing very complicated about the building itself ( a rectangular space, 132 feet long, 44 feet wide, and 68 feet high: the dimensions of Solomon's temple ).

The hall is surmounted by a barrel vault and the ceiling is flattened by lateral vaulting. Twelve windows, six per side, provide natural light. The floor of the sistine chapel is a fine example of polychrome inlaid marble in the classical Roman Cosmati tradition. About two-thirds of the way down from the altar wall, a marble and iron transenna, a kind of rood screen, separates what would have been the congregation's space ( cardinals and prelates ) from the larger space reserved for the papal chapel.
After his election, Julius had to deal with a structural crisis in his uncle's Sixtus Chapel. Cracks in the vault began to appear in 1504. And as if that weren't enough, the soft soil beneath the chaple was beginning to shift and the whole ceiling was in danger of being pulled to pieces. Iron bars were installed in the ceiling masonry and the floor to hold tha vault together and steady the
foundation.

By the end of 1504, the sistine chapel had been stabilized and Michelangelo was able to start his greatest enterprise.
During the rebuilding of saint Peter's basilica, ceremonies normally conducted in the basilica were transferred next door to the Sistine.

Still today the sistine chapel houses the conclaves of cardinals that elect the pontiff.