VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Sistine Chapel reopened to the public last week for the first time since the November coronavirus closed, but for Gianni Crea, the doors of Michelangelo’s magnificent frescoes never they were really closed.
Crea is the “keyhole” of the Vatican Museums, the main keychain that starts every morning at 5am, opens its doors and turns on the lights through 7km of one of the world’s largest collections. of art and antiques.
The Associated Press continued to create in its rounds the first day the museum reopened to the public, joining it before dawn in the “bunker” on the ground floor, where the 2,797 keys to the Vatican’s treasures they are kept overnight in safes. As the keys hung and hung from the giant keychains he wears on his wrist, Crea made his way through the Map Gallery, past the famous marble statue “Laocoön and His Sons,” and finally into the Sistine Chapel.
There, in a small wooden door, Crea pulled a white envelope from his dress pocket, ripped it off, and pulled out a small silver brass key.
With a small lantern to guide the way, he slid the key into the keyhole, turned it gently, and opened the door with a creak to reveal the still-darkened chapel where the popes are made during the secret ceremonies they draw. its very name – “conclave” – from the crucial role played by the keys. The cardinals are essentially locked “with a key” in the Sistine Chapel and in the nearby Vatican hotel for the duration of the solemn vow to elect a new pope.
As a result, the key to the Sistine Chapel is of special importance and is handled with its own protocol: after the room is closed on the day the last visitor leaves, the key will be put back in a new on white, sealed, sealed and replaced in the safe on the wall of the bunker, with its comings and goings duly marked in a thick logbook.
Crea fondly remembers the day that, three years after his 23 years of service, he was finally allowed to open the door to the Sistine Chapel alone. The privilege of the next two decades has given him the opportunity to visit “The Last Temptation” by Michelangelo and the scenes of the New Testament and the Old One alone, in the empty tranquility of dawn.
“Every statue, every room has a unique story, but of course the Sistine Chapel always gives you a particular emotion,” Crea said.
Although the public was outside the Vatican museums for 88 days, Crea and his team of ten keychains maintained their routine of opening and closing doors, as a small army had to clean, dust, and maintain the showrooms. of museum workers. The restorers took the opportunity to do maintenance work that would otherwise be impossible when the nearly 7 million annual visitors pass through the museums during a normal year.
But 2020 was anything but normal. Only about 1.3 million visitors arrived, who organized visits to the two COVID-19 closures in Italy. Now, to maintain social distancing protocols, up to 400 people can be admitted every 30 minutes, with the advance purchase of tickets online.
Crea, who confesses that he sometimes loses house keys, will make sure the doors are open.
“It is a unique emotion, an incredible privilege for me and my colleagues to have the opportunity to show these extraordinary works of art, which are part of our history, to visitors from all over the world,” he said.
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Nicole Winfield contributed.
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Follow AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/coronavirus-pandemic.