My TV crew and I are often charged a lot of money to film inside great museums and palaces on days when they are closed to the public. While sometimes a headache, this comes with the joy of being all alone with great art. Recently I’ve been aroused (artistically) while alone with Klimt’s The Kiss in Vienna. In Paris, I’ve stood silent and solitary in the splendor of the gloriously Gothic Sainte-Chapelle, the mysterious Mona Lisa, and the exquisite Unicorn Tapestries. In Italy, I’ve been all alone in a room full of Botticelli paintings, with Bernini’s Apollo Chasing Daphne, with Leonardo’s Last Supper, and with two masterful Davids: Donatello’s and Michelangelo’s. Each experience was a kind of artistic climax, leaving me craving a cigarette. Where have you experienced the majesty of Europe’s culture all alone?
In Venice at the Scuola di San Rocco. Just my husband, me and Tintoretto. Fantastico!
At the Pantheon for the last hour before closing. We were literally alone in this ancient masterpiece. I even lay on the floor looking up through the oculus! My wife was embarrassed but there was no-one there! Absolutely incredible!
At the Vatican at 08:00, in the Pinacoteca, my husband and I all alone for 40 minutes while the hordes scrambled to the Sistine Chapel.
Hi Rick, do you smoke?
The Tempietto in Trastevere — I’ve had the whole courtyard to myself a couple of times, on blustery late afternoons.
It’s easy to see how worshipping Mars through the sacrifice of lambs and goats hung upside down by a rear leg on a board was refigured as the upside-down crucifixion of early Church leaders, with the blood going through the drain in the center and anointing the lucky initiate on the lower platform — the continuity from ‘pagan’ to ‘christian’ is rarely shown more clearly than at the Tempietto.
My wife and I got to spend about 10 minutes alone with Venus de Milo thanks to the wonderful advice in your Paris guide!
I wondered amazed through the home where Jeanne d’Arc was born and raised and suddenly realized I was the only one there. I still get goose bumps just thinking about it.
I visited Florence early in February a few years ago. I spent an hour, 90% of the time alone, in the Brancacci Chapel. I can only compare the experience with being alone at the Grand Canyon while walking the South Rim Trail -both equally majestic.