Tower of Nicholas V

Just inside St. Anne's Gate, one of the main entrances through the walls into Vatican City, one notices a massive, round tower called the Tower of Nicholas V. Built in the 1400s, it was part of the Vatican walls which protected the tomb of the Apostle Peter and the residence of his successors, the Popes of Rome.

Inside the round tower of Nicholas V is the headquarts of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione or Institue for the Works of Religion. The purpose of the IOR is to "provide for the care and administration of the funds and real estate transferred or entrusted to the institute to carry out works of religion or of charity."

Arch of Bells

Picture of the Arch of Bells found on the Vatican Map website. Not much else could be found anywhere else.

Bronze Doors

After a long absence, picking this back up again.

I found a good option on Flickr to share pictures of other users of Flickr of one subject called "Galleries". Most pictures on Flickr have the option to ADD TO GALLERY on them. You can add up to 18 pictures on one gallery on your own account and save them that way.

Here's the bronze doors gallery link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38193646@N07/galleries/72157622768309429/

Exploring Vatican City

Yesterday I found this great map of the Vatican on one of the official sites for Vatican City. What's great is it is numbered and linked to information about each point of interest and so I decided the best way to be sure I checked all of those out was to go to each place starting with map point 1 and to the end with map point 64.

Some places I might just write a blurp stating what the place is and a link about it, but most places I want to post media like video and pictures about the artwork, which I want to really look at and admire throughout the place. I'll make videos myself or I'll post links to sites with pictures and videos. I found a site today that has actual virtual tours of some of the more historical buildings, so I'll post those links too.

I'm starting with point 1 on the map: The Five Bronze Doors the post after the next one.

Vatican City

Vatican City

Population: 826

Capital: Vatican City

Government: Ecclesiastical
Language: Italian

The next smallest country on the list is Vatican City, probably the only country where you have to leave and move to another once your job ends. It's a city, it's a capital, a country and on top of all of that it holds some of the finest pieces of art known to mankind. It's population is mostly made up of employees, aka, clergy and clergymen and currently 43 laypersons. It's the home of Pope, burial ground of the apostle, Peter and the unwilling background for the feature film Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks, written by Dan Brown. For everything you'd want to know factual and otherwise about the city here is it's wiki page.

Below is a map of the entire city, which to me looks more like a college campus then a country.

I spent the day visiting using Google Earth. It's really the most useful tool there is for virtual travel via the Internet. It works better with cable or DSL but I've had it work on dial up too. When it began it was just satellite shots that you could zoom in on and find anything visible from space. Now, however, a new feature was added where users of Panoromia can put pinpoint links to pictures of the area you are zooming in on that they took and I have to say most pictures offered are really very impressive and fun to look at.

Viewing Vatican City this way, I started off with zooming and roaming through the gardens and making my way up to St. Peter's. I had to stop there for today because the pictures lead me to other interesting links and gave me an idea on how I would like to look at the whole city, which I am posting next.

Pitcairn Island - The People of and Day to Day Survival

Long before the October 2004 trials and even now and I am sure long after, Pitcairn Island has had a large fan base of travelers, some of which consider the Pitcairn the "Holy Grail" of all travelers and genologists, some related to the islanders, who want to know two main questions: Who are the people/decendents of muntineers who are left on Pitcairn Island. AND. What is their life like on the island today?

Above is a picture of a daily event. It's a picture of a delivery haul in the foredeck of one of the long boats being carried back to the island. Above it some laundry has been hung to catch the sea breeze as the boat rides back causing one to wonder, is this how they get all their clothes dry?

While I am not sure as to the answer to that question, from all I found on the web, I do know that they do have electricity on the island, be it only a couple hours a day. They have houses and chores of cooking and cleaning where instead of hotels, travelers arrange deals with people on the island for room and board in exchange for chores and cooking. They have their own source of food that grows on the island, breadfruit of course being the most popular, which apparently they use some sort of guns to shoot them down from the trees. They do not have cars, but they have small carts of some sort to drive around in. They have no roads, but they do have dirt pathways. They have no currency of their own like other countries, but they do have a trade and a living of entertaining and selling handcrafted goods to passing tourist dropped off by various cruise lines.

Some of the most interesting links I found to get further information and further ideas via pictures of what life is like on Pitcairn came from these sites:

Photo's by Andrew Christian (a descendant of Fletcher Christian).
Pitcairn's Photo Album (made by fans and islanders)
Pitcairn's Study Center

Pitcairn Islands on Youtube

Here's the link to my playlist page where a playlist of the videos I found on Pitcairn Islands is set up.