Foot traffic a worry at the Sistine Chapel

Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1512, Pope Julius II led an evening prayer service to inaugurate the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s newly finished vault frescoes. As Pope Benedict XVI on October 31 celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance masterpiece, the Vatican said the growing number of tourists who visit the historic site every year might eventually lead to limiting access to the chapel to help preserve the frescoes from human-borne problems and pollutants.

“We could limit access, introducing a maximum number of entries,” wrote Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper. “We will do this, if the pressure from tourism were to increase beyond a reasonable level and if we were to fail in resolving the problem efficiently.”

Paolucci stressed, however, that in his opinion such measures will not be necessary “in the short to medium term.”