Vatican Museums

Tried and tested, and meeting with great public success during the last few years, this year we are pleased to again offer the evening openings of the Vatican Museums - announces Professor Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums.
From 3 May until the end of October (with the exception of the month of August), every Friday the "Pope's Museums" will display their treasures to the public from Italy and all over the world beween the hours of 07.00 p.m. and 11.00 p.m. Again this year, as in previous years, musical masterpieces (both classical and otherwise) will accompany the Laocoonte and the Apollo of the Belvedere, Raphael in the celebrated Rooms and Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.

However, there will be one important new feature. For the summer-autum 2013 season, the Vatican Museums have reached an agreement with the Administration of La Venaria Reale in Turin and the State Conservatory in the same city, to create a rich and varied musical programme, "Il Bello da Sentire".

The finest pupils of the Turin Conservatory will perform, amongst others, Brahms and Debussy, Beethoven and Respighi, Piazzolla and Mendelssohn. This will take place in the context of symbolic artistic and cultural twinning, at La Venaria (Saturday) and the Vatican Museums (Friday). These two celebrated centres of Italian artistic accomplishment (the Venaria was the royal palace of the Savoy family, and the Vatican Museums house the supreme anthology of great art) will thus be linked for five months of the year 2013.

In Raphael's Room of the Segnatura, in the heart of the "Pope's Museums"; a winged angel introduces us to the contemplation of Parnassus where Apollo, god of Poetry and Beauty, plays the zither surrounded by the Muses, representing all of the arts. The scroll held by the angel proclaims, in Latin, "Numine afflatur"; as if to say that Art in all its expressions is inspired by Divinity.

The Beauty of Music and the Beauty of the figurative arts belong together: Raphael shows this in his representation of Apollo Citaredo at the centre of his celestial court. Art in all its forms is God's shadow on earth. The young musicians of the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory of Turin demonstrate this to us on Friday evenings at the Vatican Museums.

The concerts will be held every Friday evening throughout May, June, July, September and October, suspended only during the month of August. The Vatican Museums will therefore set the scene for 21 unmissable appointments with Art, 21 concerts of the most varied nature, to be held in different historical rooms each time, from the Gregoriano Profano Museum to the Raphael Hall, from the Terraces of the Pinacoteca to the Courtyard of the Pinecone.
Every Friday, by simply purchasing the normal entry ticket to the Vatican Museums (online booking obligatory), the visitor will be able to attend one of the concerts in the programme of Il Bello da Sentire without incurring any additional cost.

Il Bello da Sentire is the fruit of a collaboration between the Vatican Museums, La Venaria Reale and the "Giuseppe Verdi" State Conservatory of Turin. These prestigious institutions have collaborated to produce a programme that makes the excellence of Art its distinctive feature. The Vatican Museums and the Venaria Reale guarantee a backdrop that is unique in the world, thanks to their rooms rich in art and history; the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory of Turin will complete the picture with a rich and variegated programme of concerts, entrusting in the excellence of its musicians. All the musical performances will start at 8.30 pm and will last for 60 minutes, thereby leaving enough time for visitors to continue their visit through the various sectors of the museum, including the Sistine Chapel.

For those who wish to enjoy a truly unique experience, the Directorate of the Vatican Museums is able to propose, as well as the usual guided tours, a series of themed guided tours (only in Italian) focusing on muscial iconography within the Museums. This tour schedule will be structured according to two evocative itineraries, offered on alternate Fridays: The Pinacoteca: music to see and The Gregoriano Profano Museum and the Pio Clementino Museum: testimonies to music in the ancient world. The visits, conceived and realized with the expert musical and musicological advice of Professor Ala Botti Caselli, will be conducted exclusively by guides authorized by Vatican City State and will provide an important educational opportunity for all the students of the Conservatory who will offer their musical talent to the privileged visitors to the Museums.