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Sistine Chapel

608 points| z0a | 11 years ago |vatican.va

235 comments

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[+] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
Very nice. In fact, almost nicer than being there (though you should do that anyway if you get the chance). Because now you can experience the details for as long as you want without a hundred other people around you who are just as annoyed at you as you are at them.

I get it that a tourist complaining about tourist attractions being too crowded is total hypocrisy on my part. But at the same time what I wouldn't give to be able to stand in that chapel for as long as I wanted just to look, all by myself. And now I can. We live in amazing times.

Be sure to look 'up' and use the zoom feature.

The only improvement I can think of is a 'link' icon that you can use to cut-and-paste a certain viewpoint + zoom so that you can show others specific details, and two more viewpoints at the end and the beginning (so you don't lose the corners due to distortion).

[+] Locke1689|11 years ago|reply
Having tried the Oculus Rift, the potential to experience this would be incredible. Although there's nothing quite like just sitting on a worn stone bench alone in a cathedral, just the chill air around you.

It often makes me wish for a non-religious religion -- just a refuge of tranquility.

[+] Swizec|11 years ago|reply
There's a line from a great Robin Williams movie where he talks about life to a gifted kid "I bet you can tell me every little detail about the Sistine Chapel, but you can't tell me what it smells like."

It smells like sweaty humans being herded through like cattle as quickly as possible.

[+] pavel_lishin|11 years ago|reply
It's 100% better than being there. They keep it dark (presumably to preserve the paint), they lead you through a long gallery of mostly-similar art of mostly-similar vintages, and then you're surrounded by a hundred other tourists, all trying to squint upwards and catch a glimpse of the famous artwork.

If you love history and art, then sure, it's 100% worth it. Otherwise, I'd skip it. (caveat: if you do, you will have to deal with everyone you ever meet chastising you for skipping it.)

[+] nly|11 years ago|reply
I don't know... I recall the interior being very quiet, with a really good atmosphere. I remember being amazed by the geometry of the ceiling, which you can't really see from this site. It's very much 'over-hyped' in some sense though, If you're not really a fan of great art I can see it being a 'meh' moment.

P.S. Tourists are worse at Pisa.

[+] iaskwhy|11 years ago|reply
I'd like to add the rest of the museum seemed really good and very relaxing since most people just wanted to see this famous fresco. It's quite big (thus tiring) though.
[+] neltnerb|11 years ago|reply
Only thing that I would change, would be to add Easter eggs.
[+] pingec|11 years ago|reply
The photo is way nicer than for real. Especially since for tourists the room is much darker normally in order to preserve the art better.
[+] atmosx|11 years ago|reply
I think the real thing gives you a better sense of the mastery artists (Michaelangelo) have put into this. It's majestic, really.
[+] Walkman|11 years ago|reply
And without the guard constantly clapping and saying "SSSSSSSHHHHH", very annoying indeed.
[+] Istof|11 years ago|reply
very nice, but the textures look somewhat cartoonish/unreal... is that how it really looks?
[+] tvon|11 years ago|reply
Reminds me of this enjoyable quote:

> Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - Yogi Bera

[+] nitrogen|11 years ago|reply
Meta comment about the panorama interface:

The click+drag view control feels inverted to me. I'm curious whether I'm in the minority, though. For FPS games on PC I use normal mouse, but for console FPS games I use inverted joystick.

[+] baddox|11 years ago|reply
The reason it feels inverted is because it's not "click and drag" in the normal sense (like Google Maps) where clicking and holding sets an anchor point, and moving the cursor moves the anchor point.

This is more like a virtual joystick. Clicking and holding establishes the neutral point of the joystick, and the cursor position relative to the neutral point is the velocity vector of camera movement. It behaves the same as the right hand joystick in a console FPS like Halo with a traditional (non-inverted) control scheme.

[+] nandhp|11 years ago|reply
Yes, it feels inverted to me too.

You know who's responsible for that? Google Maps (specifically Street View). There used to be a bunch of different 360° Java applets and QuickTime VR embeds that did it this way; now they all feel backwards.

[+] lucb1e|11 years ago|reply
Feels normal to me, though I'd expect the movement to stop when I stop moving my mouse (instead it continues till I release the mouse button), but I got used to it quickly enough...
[+] lostlogin|11 years ago|reply
It works beautifully on a touch screen. The only downside being that you can only zoom a very short distance. It is otherwise perfect on mobile.
[+] kissickas|11 years ago|reply
I assume most people do what I did, and try to look up at the ceiling immediately... showing you the copyright notice on the floor. Maybe that was intentional?

I wasn't fond about the forced orientation. If I tried to look at the paintings "above" The Creation of Man, I had to rotate, meaning four or so panels could only be viewed upside-down.

[+] acadien|11 years ago|reply
Just FYI the keyboard controls are much easier to use (arrow keys + shift/control to zoom).
[+] blueblob|11 years ago|reply
Let me preface this with my thoughts being that this was super cool, but I felt the same way. It is amazing that this was done in the 1400s, computer graphics and everything... I also found it annoying that double click didn't zoom.
[+] frik|11 years ago|reply
Saint Peters VR-Tour:

http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_pietro/vr_tour/M...

more Saint Peter VR-Tours: http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_pietro/vr_tour/i...

more Vatican VR-Tours: http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/index_en.html

  Special thanks to Villanova University in Pennsylvania (USA)
  for its contribution to the realization of the Virtual 
  Reality Tour of the Sistine Chapel
-- http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/index_sistina_en.htm

The Sistine Chapel HTML file contains some commented text:

  Photography: Chad Fahs & Paul Wilson, Villanova Department of Communication
  Stitching & Image Correction: Chad Fahs & Paul Wilson
  iOS conversion of the entire site is done courtesy of
  the Villanova Center of Excellence in Enterprise Technology
  and the Villanova Computer Science Department
  contact: [email protected]
Please add "(2010)" to the headline (see copyright on the chapel floor)
[+] jacquesm|11 years ago|reply
> Please add "(2010)" to the headline (see copyright on the chapel floor)

I think (1508) would be more appropriate.

[+] 80|11 years ago|reply
For more renaissance goodness check out this site on the Ghent Altarpiece - zooms so far in that you can see between the paint cracks:

http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#home/sub=altarpiece

[+] okbake|11 years ago|reply
Thats awesome. Any idea whats going on with the X-ray versions of Adam and Eve? There seems to be things going on that arn't visible in the other views. Maybe its where they painted over another painting?
[+] Geee|11 years ago|reply
Wow, that's center piece is incredible. I don't think it's humanly possible to paint something like that.
[+] bobbles|11 years ago|reply
When I was in the Sistine Chapel a couple of years ago, someone opened that big black door at the back of the hall (between the two wooden walls).

This was not the tourist exit, and inside there were huge beautiful golden hallways with exquisite paintings all around.

Does anyone know if this part of the chapel is visible or recorded anywhere?

[+] christiangenco|11 years ago|reply
From my high school AP Art History class, I believe that door is where the priest would enter. I vaguely remember something about a controversy when it was revealed that Michelangelo put the depiction of hell in the lower right (directly above the door) with the tormented characters pointing at it.

For the life of me I can't find verification of this online, though, so hopefully Mr. J (my APAH teacher) wasn't just making it up.

Edit: Ahh wait, I think you were talking about a different door. Mine is a smaller black door in the lower right of The Last Judgement.

[+] JunkDNA|11 years ago|reply
This is one of those cases where (having not used one) I sincerely hope the Oculus Rift can bring something more to the experience compared to what we have now.

What you can't get from your computer screen is the scale of it all. You can intellectually get it by looking around at reference points in the image, but you can't feel it the way you can when you are there.

This would be especially true if one had a similar view of St. Peter's. There's almost no way to convey the sheer enormity of it without actually physically being there. That's one of the things I remember the most from my visit: that feeling of being so tiny inside this massive, ornate indoor space that is so big, there's a haze when you look from end to end.

[+] AJ007|11 years ago|reply
The software running this Sistine Chapel panorama supports the Rift: http://krpano.com/stereo3d/#top

You just need to take a two image panorama photo to begin with.

I've seen a few 3D 360 videos in my Oculus Rift. There is little doubt that in the future instead of shooting 2D photos we will be capture 3D 360 degree video with geometry data. Imagine strapping on the headset and seeing yourself as a toddler taking your first steps. Pretty wild stuff.

[+] JonnieCache|11 years ago|reply
I saw a thing on TV once where some religious historian lady was pointing out how the robe enclosing god as he reaches out to adam resembles the human brain in cross section. She speculated that Michelangelo may have been leaving a clue as to what he really thought of his employers, based on his attendance at banned human dissections around that time.

(It was a serious programme about art history BTW, not some conspiracy nonsense. Wish I could remember the name.)

[+] sheltgor|11 years ago|reply
Having never had the opportunity to actually see this in person, yet seeing god knows how many prints, its fascinating to see the whole room in perspective and just how monumental of an artistic achievement this was. Lots of components I'd never seen that had me starting for minutes. Only thing I wish was that there was a way to zoom.
[+] aashaykumar92|11 years ago|reply
Very cool. This got me thinking: there are many tourist sites where people aren't allowed to go anymore because of safety/security issues. It would be awesome if the site coordinators (or whoever makes executive decisions on such things) would make pages like this one available on their websites for their respective tourist attractions. And in more POVs.
[+] j2kun|11 years ago|reply
Having never visited, I did not realize until how high the density of nudity per square meter was.
[+] tormeh|11 years ago|reply
There are uncovered breasts! Penises! Can't find any vulvas unfortunately. It's funny to think that they would have to censor this on American television because of the religious right.

Another way to think of it: Miley Cyrus is actually more covered than many of the characters in the Sistine Chapel.

[+] araes|11 years ago|reply
Anyone have the technical info on how this was done and put together? Looking at other pages, it appears this was created by Villanova University in Pennsylvania (http://www1.villanova.edu/main.html) for the Vatican, and they appear to have several folks actively publishing in photogrammetry journals. It looks like it was done with some very high quality photogrammetry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry), and I'd be interested to see what program they used, and if its available, as my agency could probably find some uses for it.
[+] klunger|11 years ago|reply
When I was a kid, my parents took me to Disney World. It was a long time ago, childhood amnesia and so on, so forgive the fuzzy details here... But basically, they had a very early version of virtual reality (a headset a la Oculus Rift). They chose the same imagery, so I was immersed in the Sistine Chapel. I remember being deeply impressed at the time (although I was a kid, so who knows how great it actually was). Regardless, I have never been to Italy and have wanted to go ever since that experience.
[+] sytelus|11 years ago|reply
You know what would be cool? If I can click on those painting and read story underlying each of them. I can read that all day long.
[+] qq66|11 years ago|reply
Really awesome stuff. I wonder why they chose this level of maximum resolution -- from the Gigapixel images it's clear that they could support zooming into the individual paint cracks, although with the publicity that this is getting, that might have incurred extreme bandwidth costs.
[+] bostonpete|11 years ago|reply
This is an extreme violation of the Chapel's no photography rule. I hope they catch whoever did this.
[+] radley|11 years ago|reply
It's the Vatican's own web site...
[+] zz1|11 years ago|reply
Am I the only one finding it ironic that they used (Adobe) Flash to show the chapel to the whole world, when tourists can't use (camera) flash to show it to their close friends?

Well, just jacquesm, I simpathize with the stewards: "please, no flash" :(

[+] chrismcb|11 years ago|reply
From an American copyright point of view... Is this copyrightable? It is a reproduction of a work of art that is no longer under copyright. The image itself offers no creativity, other than as a reproduction.