The Gallery of the Candelabra, first stretch of the long gallery

The Gallery of the Candelabra is the first part of the long gallery on the second floor, and nearly everyone treats it as a mere entrance hall to the Tapestries and the Maps. I think that’s a small but costly mistake, because ten well-spent minutes get you a sculpture with a real story and one of the loveliest floors in the building. Here’s what it is, what to look at and how it fits into the Vatican Museums route.

Where the name comes from

The name is right in front of you. Monumental marble candelabra, each paired with coloured marble columns, split the gallery into six sections. It’s more than decoration, because it works as a compass. Count the sections and you always know how far you are from the Tapestries.

The official website files it under the Pio Clementino, home of the Laocoön, even though it has its own number on the map and is on a different floor. That makes sense, since it was set up by the same Pius VI who gave that museum half its name, between 1785 and 1788.

A marble salon made a century later

What you see today isn’t Pius VI’s work. Leo XIII, pope from 1878 to 1903, had the whole decoration redone to a design by Annibale Angelini. The paintings are by Domenico Torti and Ludwig Seitz, and the marble inlay by Giuseppe Rinaldi and Luigi Medici. The official page adds a detail that explains the feel of the place. The works were arranged like furniture, following a symmetry that matches the architecture, and visitors came in through a monumental bronze gate that is still there.

That’s why I’d tell you to look down. The coloured marble floor is the part of the scheme that has aged best and the one that gets fewest photos, because people have their phones aimed at the vault or at the doorway at the far end. Stand at the start of any section and follow the pattern to the next candelabrum, and the whole corridor suddenly reads as one design rather than a string of objects.

Which piece shouldn’t you miss?

If you stop only once, make it the Persian warrior. He wears a Phrygian cap and is caught in a final attempt to defend himself, leaning back with his right arm raised and sword in hand. The museums single out his face, and rightly so, because it conveys the horror of defeat without needing a label.

The back story is even better. He’s thought to be a Roman copy, from around AD 110-120, of one of four bronze groups that Attalus II of Pergamon dedicated around 160-150 BC on the Athenian Acropolis and at Pergamon, the so-called Lesser Attalid Dedication, celebrating Greek victories. This warrior would belong to the Marathon group, the battle of 490 BC. He turned up in Rome between 1503 and 1512, with other pieces from the same set, while the building now called Palazzo Madama was going up.

Its place on the route, and the minutes it deserves

On the official map it’s number 6. You arrive from the Etruscan Museum, number 5, after climbing up from the Pio Clementino, and ahead lies the Gallery of Tapestries, with the Gallery of Maps beyond. It’s a one-way stretch, so what you skip here stays skipped. The official tours, both the last-Sunday one and the «Arte e Fede» tour, pass through as part of what they call the upper galleries, and few of them pause for more than a couple of minutes. On your own, that’s exactly the margin you have to get ahead and look properly.

I’d give it ten minutes. Three for the warrior, a couple for the floor and the rest for counting sections and glancing up. It’s covered by the standard ticket, flash-free photos are allowed and the last Sunday of every month costs nothing. If you’re short of time, I’ve split the minutes across all these rooms in how long the Vatican Museums take.