The Courtyard of the Pine Cone, a Roman fountain and a modern sphere

The Courtyard of the Pine Cone is where you finally get to breathe in the Vatican Museums. After a stretch of enclosed rooms you step out into a vast open courtyard, with a giant bronze pine cone in a niche and a sphere gleaming like gold in the middle that everyone photographs. For me it’s the best place in the museums to stop, and also one of the worst explained, because hardly anyone knows what they’re looking at. Here’s the lot, keeping what the official website says apart from what only other sources claim. To place it in your visit, see how I’d plan a day at the Vatican Museums.

So what is the Pine Cone?

It’s a fountain. The museums describe it as a colossal bronze pine cone that began life as a Roman fountain in the 2nd century AD. It was found in the Campus Martius, the area around the Pantheon, and later moved to the colonnaded atrium of Old St Peter’s, where pilgrims would have seen it on the way in. In 1608, with the new basilica going up, it was brought to this courtyard, which has carried its name ever since.

The official website gives no measurements. Encyclopaedias say it’s almost four metres tall, and I’d take that as a guide rather than a hard fact. What’s beyond doubt is how famous it was. Dante uses it in Canto XXXI of the Inferno to convey the size of the giant Nimrod’s face, which struck him as long and broad «come la pina di San Pietro a Roma».

As for what it means, this is where the internet gets carried away. All sorts of theories circulate, but the museums’ website says only that it was a Roman fountain, and I wouldn’t claim anything beyond that.

A niche from 1562 and two Egyptian lions

The Pine Cone sits in the Nicchione, the great niche that closes the courtyard on its north side. Pirro Ligorio built it in 1562 under Pius IV, modelled on the apses of the Roman Forum, replacing the low exedra Bramante had designed to finish off the old Belvedere Courtyard. Above it is the terrace of the Vatican Egyptian Museum, and at the Pine Cone’s feet lie the two lions of Pharaoh Nectanebo I.

Its long-time companions are missing. In the atrium of Old St Peter’s, the Pine Cone crowned a fountain for ritual washing, the Cantharus, flanked by two gilded bronze peacocks. In 1608 they came to the courtyard with it and were later moved, for safekeeping, into the Braccio Nuovo of the Chiaramonti Museum, whose portico opens onto the courtyard.

The sphere in the middle

The sculpture everyone photographs is Sfera con sfera, Sphere Within Sphere, by Arnaldo Pomodoro. The museums’ website has no page on it, so what follows comes from Wikipedia. It was placed in the centre of the courtyard in 1990 and belongs to a series of spheres the sculptor made in various sizes for sites around the world. According to the same source, the spheres stand for a kind of ideal city, and Pomodoro talked about breaking these perfect forms open to reveal the ferment inside, with parts that resemble gears.

It isn’t gold, however much it looks it. It’s polished bronze, and that’s where the shine comes from. I’d walk right round it rather than shooting it from the front, because the broken-open side, with its cogs and teeth, is far more interesting than the smooth one everybody photographs.

Making the most of the courtyard

The museums list it as a rest area with seating and put panels in it explaining the Sistine Chapel, because inside the chapel total silence is expected. I’d read them here, sitting down, before heading up to the galleries. If you want a sit-down meal without leaving the museums, the Bistrot La Pigna is in the courtyard itself. And one detail I love, beneath your feet lies a two-storey Vatican Archives bunker opened by John Paul II in 1980, which I cover in the Vatican Library and Archives.