VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Sistine Chapel reopened to the public last week for the first time since the closing of the coronavirus in November, but for Gianni Crea, the doors to Michelangelo’s beautiful frescoes were never really closed.
Crea is the “clavigero” of the Vatican Museums, the main key keeper whose job starts at 5:00 am every morning, opens the doors and turns on the lights for 7 kilometers (4 1/2 miles) of one of the world’s largest collections of art and antiquities.
The Associated Press followed Crea during his rounds on the first day the museum reopened to the public and joined him before sunrise in the “bunker” below, where the 2,797 keys to Vatican treasures are kept in wall vaults overnight. While the keys dangled and jangled from giant key rings he wears on his wrist, Crea snaked his way through the Gallery of Maps, past the famous marble statue “Laocoön and His Sons” and finally to the Sistine Chapel.
There, by a small wooden door, Crea took a white envelope from his pack bag, tore it open, and took out a small silver-colored key.
Using a small flashlight, he put the key in the keyhole, turned it gently and cracked open the door to reveal the still-dark chapel where popes are made during the secret ceremonies that draw their name – ‘conclave’ – from the crucial role that keys play in this. Cardinals are essentially locked up “with a key” in the Sistine Chapel and the nearby Vatican Hotel during the solemn vote to elect a new Pope.
As a result, the key to the Sistine Chapel is of particular importance and is treated with its own protocol: after the room is closed for the day the last visitor leaves, the key is returned to a new white envelope, sealed, stamped and replaced in the bunker wall safe, with its comings and goings duly noted in a thick register book.
Crea fondly remembers the day that, three years after his now-23 years of service, he was finally allowed to open the door to the Sistine Chapel. The privilege of the past two decades has given him the opportunity to visit Michelangelo’s “Final Temptation” and scenes from the New Testament and the Old Whole alone, in the empty stillness of dawn.
“All statues, all rooms have a unique history, but of course the Sistine Chapel always gives you a special emotion,” said Crea.
Although the public was kept out of the Vatican Museums for 88 days, Crea and his team of 10 key guards continued their routine of opening and closing doors as the exhibition areas had to be cleaned, dusted and maintained by a small army of museum staff. Restorers took the opportunity to carry out maintenance work that would otherwise be impossible if the nearly 7 million visitors a year visit the museums in a normal year.
But 2020 was anything but normal. Only about 1.3 million visitors came, organizing visits around the two COVID-19 lockdowns in Italy. To enforce social distance protocols, up to 400 people can now be admitted every 30 minutes, with timed tickets pre-purchased online.
Crea, who confesses that he has lost his own house keys, will make sure that the doors are open for them.
“It is a unique emotion, an incredible privilege for me and my colleagues 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’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/coronavirus-pandemic.