Maybe the coolest thing I've done in Rome...

I have starting work with the company my friend Melissa works for, and have become their second tour guide, behind her boss, Filippo. Their company, called Italy's Finest Lifestyle Management, organizes private visits to some of the hardest to enter sites in the city and works hand in hand with other larger companies as acting tour guides in Rome. Last week they were collaborating with another company based outside of Rome that needed insider assistance. The group they brought to Rome was about thirty people and they wanted a visit to the Vatican Museums, and not just any visit, one after closing when the museums were empty.

We were supposed to meet the organizers at the entrance to the Museums at 6:30 and then the group, coming in a caravan of vans was to arrive at 6:45 so we could do introductions before the museums doors opened precisely at 7:00. I was the first to arrive and stood in front of the main entrance for a few minutes in the brisk early December evening until I saw Filippo and Melissa enter the cafe across the street to meet their counterparts. I hustled across the street to meet them and was introduced to everyone before we walked back across the street, nearly getting run over by a Fiat that didn't want to stop for pedestrians.

For the next few minutes we milled around running over last minute details of organizing two simultaneous visits so Filippo and I would not step on each others toes: how far apart would we need to be in the Galleries of Maps and Tapestries? Where did we each want to start in the Raphael rooms? Where would we each set up in the Sistine Chapel? We had discussed all this before but just wanted to run through it once more. That said and done all we had to do was wait.

As we stood there I started to get oddly nervous. I have given a good number of tours of the Vatican Museums so far but this was different. It was stepping up to the big time, a large group of travelers coming for all walks of life, but with one common interest, art. While I had taken people through before this was the first time the group would surely already know much of what I was discussing, and thus I had to make it really come to life, combining my knowledge and my acting abilities, which haven't been tested since Henry V in 8th grade.

I had known about this for a long time and felt prepared until I met with Filippo the week before to run through the details and he told me that the part of the museum that contains the ancient sculpture would be closed. This was a problem. In my opinion, and now hopefully the people I've taken around the museum appreciate this as well, the Vatican's strongest point as a museum is that in the first half of your visit you see the ancient works that Michelangelo and Raphael studied, and then the second half you see how those works influenced the masters works.

You see Michelangelo's Adam in much greater depth if you have admired the Belvedere Torso and its overly muscular features that Michelangelo was aiming to replicate. The twisted, tormented figures of the Last Judgment swirl around Christ in the center that much more if you have seen the pain in Laocoön's face and his swelled muscles desperately combating the serpents pulling him and his sons out to sea for his untimely distrust of Greeks. But I was without these, only the best descriptions of these works I could come up with and the hope that someone might know what I was talking about.

The group arrived and after a slightly awkward pause in the entrance as Filippo talked a bit longer than I did, we made our way into the museums, accompanied by two museums guards to make sure no one wandered off. The tour went very well and the highlight for me was walking into the Sistine Chapel. I led my group into the chapel ahead of Filippo's and when I entered I was the only person there for a matter of moments. I was not that far ahead of the group, so it wasn't very long, but it still happened. I was the only person in the Sistine Chapel.

I let the group filter in and have a look by themselves for a minute (so I could do the same) before they found seats and I set about explaining the storied history to the group, at this point a bit over sightseeing, but were slightly reinvigorated by the solemnity of the chapel.