Page:How to See the Vatican, Sladen, 1914.djvu/53

 HOW TO SEE THE VATICAN vista, more regal if not so ancient or historical. The stranger will not heed the closely guarded staircase on his right until he knows that it is the Jacob's ladder to the apartments of the Pontiff himself. His eyes will be taken up with the Scala Regia (the giant staircase, royal in name as well as in magnificence), which leads up through a stately colonnade to the Sala Regia—the Royal Hall—where, surrounded by vast frescoed triumphs of the Catholic Faith, beneath a fretted ceiling as rich in gold as the waters of Pactolus, the Pope-King was wont to receive the Ambassadors of his brother Kings. The very passage which leads off it is of such dimensions and ambitions that it is called the Ducal Hall.

The Vatican is full of chambers with lofty and romantic names such as the Hall of the Beatifications, where saints on earth are canonized; the Gallery of Inscriptions; the Christian and Profane Museums; the Hall of the Popes; the Hall of the Madonna; the Hall of the Lives of the Saints; the Hall of the Credo; the Hall of the Sibyls (the last five in the Borgia Apartments)—not one of which but is worth seeing, not one of which but can be seen.

The Vatican, like Janus, the God of Rome, has two faces. Seen from the one side it is the Pope's Kingdom; seen from the other it is his home. On the first you may gaze on any weekday Rh