Vatican City

The summer of my junior year, I was able to travel to Europe. One country I visited was Italy. While in Italy I found a spiritual connection with Vatican City. It just so happens that Vatican City is one of the most-visited pilgrimage sites in the world. I was fortunate enough to visit the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica while there. Those two places, if you get the chance to visit, will render you speechless. Everyone knows about the Sistine Chapel and how Michelangelo painted it lying down and snuck in different jokes among the paintings despite the Pope, so on and so forth. But nothing really prepares you for the real thing. Upon entering the Sistine Chapel, my tour guide informs us that there is no flash photography nor talking allowed. No flash photography...ok that's annoying, but no talking? What's up with that? Believe me, that is the key. When I walked into that room, I was immediately hit with silence. In that moment, I realized that I couldn't speak even if I wanted to. The ceiling was too beautiful. Never in my life had I been rendered speechless. The paintings were truly breathtaking. A similar experience occurred when I visited St. Peter's Basilica. Now, I have attended Church every Sunday and the weekly Wednesday night activities at my church for my entire life. I thought this would be just another church, but it was so much more. Not only was the architecture breathtaking, but the paintings inside were as well. It hit me. The presence was there, I felt it. I had a spiritual connection to these places. I'm not exactly sure how to describe what I felt, but I now understand the concept of a "sacred place".