Assemblies at the Vatican Museums, what really happened? A likely limited incident

What happened on Saturday, February 13, at the Vatican Museums? Repubblica, in an article published today, even spoke of an “assemblage scandal” for a situation that allegedly arose on Saturday afternoon in the Raphael rooms, reporting the account of a guide and two Tripadvisor users who told of excessively crowded rooms and “absolute lack of respect for the safety rules relating to the Covid” (so did a user on the well-known review platform, which at the time of writing has four negative reviews posted in recent days, relating to what happened on Saturday).

From the information that Windows on Art has been able to gather, the photographs that have been making the rounds on the web seem to refer to a moment of blockage that would have occurred roughly between 4:30 and 5 p.m., although it has not been possible to tell what the actual duration was (in any case, no more than half an hour, according to the accounts of those who were on site: in any case, at this time the problem would be serious even if it lasted only a few minutes). At the moment it is not possible to determine the exact cause of the blockage: there is talk of groups on a guided tour lingering in the Raphael Rooms and problems in dealing with the blockage that was allegedly created, but, we repeat, there is no more information at the moment. The Raphael Rooms constitute the sequence of rooms most popular with visitors to the Vatican Museums, where typically all visiting people linger the longest: already crowded even before the restrictions to little-visited museums, they represented the main point of slowing down of the tour route in the pre-Covid era, not least because they are very small rooms in relation to the numbers of the Vatican Museums’ public, and to get there one has to go through some rather narrow passages. Those who have been in the block speak of a time when crowding would indeed have occurred: nothing exceptional or tragic for the Vatican Museums, but reportedly dense enough to make one fear for compliance with the physical distancing to which the coronavirus has now accustomed us.

The words of director Barbara Jatta

The director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, entrusted the ANSA agency with her comment: “Last Saturday I was also at the Vatican Museums guiding some visitors,” she said, “and the situation was not at all so dramatic. I sincerely find the controversies brought up by some guides a bit silly. First they were complaining about the closure of the Museums, now, after a full 88 days of forced stop, they are complaining about the reopening.” Jatta, ANSA writes, is referring to a guide who gave an interview in a national newspaper. The director, however, thunders against the irresponsibility of that same guide: “I am sorry, because the problem was not there. I myself acted as a guide for two groups, entertaining us in the halls the right amount of time. But as far as I am told, this outside guide kept his visitors a good 40 minutes in one of the main halls.”

The Vatican Museums are currently working with far lower visitor numbers than pre-Covid, and access is restricted, with reservations required (and on this occasion granted free of charge, since it is a prerequisite for museum access). Visitors enter in bands staggered 30 minutes apart (visitors choose their own band at the time of reservation: if they run out of seats, they must change their preference). It should be noted, however, that the Vatican Museums are very popular with the public on Saturdays because, with the exception of Val d’Aosta, which has reopened its museums on weekends taking advantage of its autonomy, they are the only museum open on weekends in the entire peninsula, since they are located on foreign territory (Vatican City) and therefore do not respond to Italian laws. The museums reopened on February 1, and no one reported any problems for the previous Saturday, nor for the morning and early afternoon hours of Saturday 13. What’s more, those who have visited the complex since Feb. 1 always speak of the Vatican Museums being half-empty and where the rules of spacing are easily respected and precisely enforced by the museums’ Custodial Corps.

Pictured: the Stanza della Segnatura, one of Raphael’s Stanze

Assemblies at the Vatican Museums, what really happened? A likely limited incident

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