Vatican News reported that Barbara Jatta, Directress of the Vatican Museums, is studying a project to improve access to the Vatican Museums and, in particular, to facilitate and organize better visits to the Sistine Chapel, reported Vatican News.
“How to make more functional and agreeable the seven-kilometer course of the Vatican Museums to millions of visitors that follow it every year and, at the same time, show Departments and Collections of the Pope’s Museums less frequented and less known? However, above all, how to make the preferred course to the Sistine Chapel not limited with regard to the distribution of visits in the Museums?” These are but two of the questions that a Commission of the Museums will attempt to answer under Jatta’s direction.
Included in the enlargement project is a more spacious Conference Hall, an Exhibition Hall dedicated to subjects of average interest, as well as plans for the hiring of additional guards, which will make possible the opening of less visited areas, and for courses of formation for the guards.
The greatest novelty will be the opening of a new entrance to the Museums, not far from the present one, to access directly areas such as the lay Gregorian Museum or the Square Garden.
Barbara Jatta stressed that it’s necessary to offer to greater numbers the possibility of having access to “incredible treasures” that the Vatican Museums house. They are of “great artistic value,” but also “in terms of the faith.” “Our Museums are also a testimony of faith and Christian devotion,” she said. “It’s inconceivable that a visitor can’t access them because of a limited number or for reasons of space or lack of organization,” she added.
Finally, from now and until the end of 2018, many novelties await the great public, such as the end of the restoration of the Battle of the Ponte Milvio (‘Milvian Bridge’), in Raphael’s Halls, and the holding of an exhibition in Mexico and another exhibition, which will arrive next December from Russia.
