Events set for Vatican Museums’ 500th year

The Vatican is planning a series of exhibits, conferences and guided visits to a newly discovered necropolis to mark the 500th anniversary of the Vatican Museums, among the oldest and most famous museums in the world.

The centerpiece of the celebrations is a show surrounding the 1506 discovery near the Colosseum of the Laocoon, a marble statue dating from 30 to 40 BC. of the Trojan priest who along with his two sons was killed by a sea serpent for having warned his people about the Trojan horse.

When the statue was unearthed, Pope Julius II bought it and transferred it to the Vatican, forming the origins of the Holy See’s vast collection of art and antiquities on display in a handful of Vatican museums around Rome.

The other highlight of the anniversary is the public opening of an unusually well-preserved necropolis that was discovered in 2003 during excavations inside Vatican City for a new parking lot. The site contains about 30 burial chambers, 60 individual tombs and funeral altars dating from the first century AD that were decorated with frescoes and mosaics. The Vatican says the importance of the necropolis is second only to that containing what are believed to be the relics of St. Peter, underneath St. Peter’s Basilica.

The other events planned for 2006 include the reopening of renovated parts of two museums -- the Christian Museum and the Ethnological Missionary Museum.

The Vatican will also open the newly restored Room of Mysteries in the Borgia Apartments of the Apostolic Palace, which are attributed to Pinturicchio.