The Vatican Museums can boast the world's most beautiful frescoes, but just what is a fresco?

We begin our look inside the Vatican Museums with an introduction to the deservedly most famous fresco of the four Raphael Rooms. In the background, I wonder whether modern universities are still moved by the ideal it represents.

Friars are not monks, and the Catholic Church includes many different sub-groups or orders. Does this matter?

The Warrior Pope was also the first patron of the Vatican Museums. Why would a pope want to make public the nude statues of pagan artists and the books of pagan thinkers?

We here take a quick look at the moral questions raised by Pope Julius II's outrageous conduct.

We make a second trip to the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains, this time to focus on Michelangelo's sculpted Funeral Monument to Pope Julius II.

This Mini Pod reviews the big questions that always lurk in the background of this podcast series and also introduces a new interactive map.

We today review the conflicts that divide Ancient, Christian, and Modern Rome, with special attention to the various monuments used by Modern Rome in its struggle to bury the Rome of the Popes. Can we find, notwithstanding these many quarrels, something identifiable as Western Civilization?

We move from one basilica devoted to St. Peter to another, and this one requires that we get to know better the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance and a pope who wore armor into battle and also promoted the finest art of the Roman Renaissance.

Today we investigate two tombs under St. Peter's Basilica, one of a saint, the other of a sinner, or so at least the saint would say. But this sinner defends himself.