Sistine Chapel

Read this introduction before entering the Sistine Chapel. Inside, keep silent and put your phone away. The chapel asks you to look without photographs, filming or spoken commentary. Carry three parts of its decoration in mind. The earlier wall paintings pair stories of Moses with stories of Christ. Above them, Michelangelo’s ceiling follows Genesis alongside prophets, sibyls and Christ’s ancestors. On the altar wall, his later Last Judgement gathers a crowd around Christ. These belong to different commissions. Pope Sixtus IV, whose name the chapel bears, had the earlier chapel restored in the late fifteenth century. Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli and their teams painted its walls in 1481–1482. Pope Julius II later commissioned Michelangelo’s ceiling, completed in 1512. The Last Judgement followed in 1536–1541. The chapel’s decoration changed while its religious purpose continued. The ceiling rises above an earlier programme, and the altar wall replaced parts of it. Remembering those layers gives you a way to begin looking once you are inside.