1 / 9 · 8 min ·
An old fountain in a museum courtyard
Courtyard of the Pinecone ↗After admission and security at Viale Vaticano, follow the museum signs to the Pinecone Courtyard. Use the courtyard as your first place to pause.
Find the bronze pinecone that gives the courtyard its name.
The bronze pinecone gives this courtyard its name. It is an ancient object that once belonged to a fountain in front of old St Peter's. Here, at the beginning of our museum visit, a piece of that earlier setting has become the feature by which we recognize another place.
Old St Peter's was the basilica that preceded the present church. The pinecone's history reaches beyond the rooms we will visit. Objects associated with the basilica could outlive their first surroundings and find another home within the Vatican. A change of setting becomes part of the object's story.
The original bronze peacocks once associated with the pinecone are conserved in the New Wing. Keep that distinction in mind when looking at birds in the courtyard setting. Objects seen together today need not all be the originals that stood together in the past.
This is also a place where the museum lets visitors pause between collections. The courtyard belongs to the admitted visit. Around it, palace spaces and collection galleries form parts of the same complex, though they were made and adapted at different times.
Begin to separate the age of the pinecone from the age and purpose of its surroundings. An ancient bronze from a fountain now names a museum courtyard. We will meet that change of use again in sculptures excavated in Rome and brought into a pope's collection.
Follow signs for the Pio Clementino Museum and Octagonal Court. There, identify Laocoön by its label and the three figures attacked by snakes.
