The Roanoke daily times. (Roanoke, Va.) 1895-1897, 1896-08-19
WHERE THE POPE RESIDES.
Marion Crawford Writes About the
Vatican.
(From The Century,

(trOm Inc century,
To the average stranger "the Vatican,
suggests only the museum of sculpture
the picture galleries and the loggia. He
remembers, besides the objects of art
which he has seen, the fact of having
walked great distance through straight
corridors, up and down short flights of
marble steps and through irregularly
shaped and unsymetrically disposed halls
If he had any idea of the points of the
compass when he entered, he is COM
pletely confused in five minutes, and
comes out at last with the sensation of
having been walking in labyrinth. He
will find it hard to give anyone an i'm.
preston of the sort of building in which
he has been, and certainly he cannot
have any knowledge of the Typographical
relations of its parts. Yet in his pass.
age through the museums and galleries
he has seen but very small part of the
whole, and, excepting when in the loggia,
he probably could not have stood still and
pointed in the direction of the main en-
trance of the palace.
In order to speak even specifically of
it all, it is Indispensable to classify Its
parts in some way. Vast and irregular
it is at its two ends, toward the colon
made and toward the bastions of the city,
but the intervening stretch consists of
over $50 yards long, about so yards apart,
and yoked in the middle of the braccio
nuovo of the museum and part of the
library, SO as to inclose two vast courts
the one known rs the Acknowledgement to
be confused with the Belvedere in the
museum-and the other called the Gar
den of the Pigna, from the bronze pin
cone, which stands at one end of it.
Across these parallel buildings, and
toward the city, n large pile is erected,
about 200 yards long, very irregular, and
containing the papal residence and the
apartments of several cardinals, the Sis
tine chapel, the Pauline chapel, the Bor-
gia tower, the stanze and loggia of Raph-
ael and the court of st. Damascus. At
the other end of the paralleloSram are
grouped the equally irregular but more
beautiful buildings of the old museum,
of which the windows look over the walls
of the city, and which originally received
the name of Belvedere on account of the
lovely view. This is said to have been Il
sort of summer house of the Borgia not
then connected with the palace by the
long galleries
1t would be n hopeless and weary task
to attempt to trace the history of the
buildings. The pope's private apart
ments occupy the eastern wing of the
par built round the court of ST. Da-
mascus; that is to say they are at the
extreme end of the Vatican, nearest the
city, and over the colonnade, and the
windows of the pope's room are visible
from the square. The vast mass which
rises above the columns to the right of ST.
Peters is only small part of the whole
palace, but it is not the most modern by
any means. 1t contains, for instance,
the Sistine chapel, which is considerably
older than the present church, having
been built by Sixtus ", whose beautiful
bronze monument is in the chapel of the
sacrament. 1t contains, stoo, Raphael
stanze, or halls, and Bramante's famous
loggia, the beautiful architecture of
which is Il frame for some of Bramantes
best work.