Instead of the Vatican Museums: little-known frescoed churches and crypts
Looking for an alternative to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel? 13 frescoed churches and crypts in Italy (and beyond) with no queues.
The Sistine Chapel is the grand finale of the Vatican Museums: Michelangelo's vault, the Last Judgment and, all around, queues that start at dawn and rooms you enter shoulder to shoulder. If you're looking for an alternative to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel without giving up breathtaking frescoes, Italy is full of them: country churches and crypts carved into the rock where an entire painted cycle is often all yours. Here are thirteen places to put on your list, in Italy and beyond.
Near Rome
**In Lazio, an hour from Rome.** The first stop is almost a slight to the Vatican: the crypt of San Magno beneath the cathedral of Anagni preserves over five hundred square metres of thirteenth-century frescoes and a Cosmatesque floor, to the point that it's called "the Sistine Chapel of the Middle Ages". You'll find it told in Anagni and its frescoed crypt. A little further north, in the Tuscia, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore keeps a painted Last Judgment that alone is worth the trip: the details are in the frescoed Judgment of Tuscania.
**In Campania, beneath Monte Tifata.** The Benedictine basilica of Sant'Angelo in Formis, near Capua is perhaps the most literal analogy: commissioned by Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino between 1072 and 1087, it stands on the remains of a temple of Diana and, on the counter-façade, shows a Last Judgment placed exactly where Michelangelo would later put his. The Byzantine-Campanian cycle, once made up of around a hundred scenes, is among the best preserved in the South. In Naples, in the Rione Sanità, you descend instead into the Cripta dei Cristallini, a Greek-Hellenistic hypogeum with painted decoration recently reopened to the public.
**In Basilicata, the "rock-cut Sistine".** In the Murgia of Matera, the Crypt of Original Sin is an eighth-to-ninth-century rock-hewn church frescoed by the so-called Painter of the Flowers of Matera, with the oldest depiction of Genesis in the South. It can only be visited by reservation, with the ticket collected at the Dragone farm along the Appian Way: arrive half an hour before your slot. Entry is 10 euros, and inside there are just a few of you.
Crypts in the rock
**In Apulia, Byzantine frescoes in the rock.** In the countryside of San Vito dei Normanni, the Crypt of San Biagio preserves a thirteenth-century Byzantine cycle carved into the limestone bank, complete with the painters' inscriptions. Further south, in the Salento, the Crypt of the Crucifix at Ugento repeats the same pattern: an underground sanctuary where the frescoes survive in the dark, a few kilometres from the crowded beaches.
**In the North, between Lombardy and Veneto.** In Milan, behind Corso Magenta and next to Leonardo's vineyard, the church of San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore is entirely covered by the frescoes of Bernardino Luini and his workshop: it's called "Milan's Sistine Chapel" and entry is free. In the Varese area, at Castelseprio, Santa Maria foris portas holds a rare early-medieval cycle of Byzantine influence on the infancy of Christ, today part of the UNESCO Heritage of the Lombards. Among the Prosecco hills, finally, the Pieve di San Pietro di Feletto lines up a thousand years of wall painting, including the famous "Christ of the Sunday".
**In the Dolomites, death that dances.** On the outer wall of the church of San Vigilio at Pinzolo, in Val Rendena, Simone Baschenis painted in 1539 a Dance of Death twenty-one metres long: skeletons dragging away popes, emperors and beggars, each with its own tercet in the vernacular. It's an open-air fresco, visible even when the church is closed.
Beyond the borders
**Two "Sistine Chapels" abroad.** If the journey pushes beyond Italy, in Romania the monastery church of Voroneț, in Bucovina actually bears the nickname of "Sistine Chapel of the East": the whole façade is covered by a Last Judgment laid over that famous Voroneț blue. In Madrid, hidden in the Malasaña district, the elliptical church of San Antonio de los Alemanes is a Baroque bubble frescoed from floor to dome, ignored by tourists a few steps from the Gran Vía.
Before you set out
Almost all of these places can be visited for free or for a few euros, without bookings months in advance and without the crush of the Sistine. One rule holds: phone ahead or check the opening hours before you leave, because many of these minor churches open for limited windows or on request to the parish priest. In return, the fresco is yours and yours alone.
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Practical info
When is the best time to visit Instead of the Vatican Museums?
The recommended time is June, July and September, when it is less crowded.
Where is Instead of the Vatican Museums?
Instead of the Vatican Museums is located in Italy.
