And here we are, at our last point: the Palazzo dei Convertendi. If you look around for a second, you'll feel that Borgo has its own unique way of saying goodbye. It's not with fireworks, nor with noise. It's with that discreet elegance of someone who has seen centuries pass through the front door and, even so, still knows how to keep secrets.
When we started way back, at the Torre de São João, the Vatican seemed like an ancient fairy-tale fortress - stone, height, neatly arranged silence. I like to imagine that tower as an old doorman: he doesn't say much, but he notices everything. And then, step by step, we entered that “inside” that almost no one imagines. The Jardins do Vaticano were our breathing space - as if history, from time to time, also needed to sit on a bench in the shade, listen to water falling, and pretend it wasn't in a hurry.
We passed by the Domus Sanctae Marthae, which has that beautiful everyday quality: a place where the Church, which sometimes seems only made of ceremonies and marble, remembers that it is also made of corridors, quick meetings, hurried coffees, and decisions made in hushed tones. And when we talked about the meeting on the protection of minors… there the walk became more serious. Because not every story here is golden. But do you know what I find moving? The Vatican, with all its weight, is also a place where people try to learn, correct, protect. That's also part of the journey.
And then, like in a novel that decides to visit the underground, we descended to the Necrópole. You can't forget it, can you? That cooler air, the ancient stones, time almost becoming a presence beside us. We walk and it feels like we tread carefully not only out of respect for the dead, but because the questions become more alive down there: what remains of us? what is worth building?
Then we returned to the light - and what light. Between academies, chapels, and rooms that seem made to hold the impossible, you collected scenes: the Cappella Paolina as a reserved whisper, the Capela Sistina as a silent thunder. Some people enter the Sistina and only see a famous ceiling. But you and I, today, saw something more human: the stubborn will to leave beauty behind, as if to say “I passed through here, and I thought big.”
And when we arrived at the smaller chapels, the more discreet rooms, the hidden treasures - the Niccolina, modern art amidst the classical - it was like opening drawers in an old house and finding letters, photographs, memories that no one throws away. The Vatican has that: it's not a straight line. It's a pile of layers. A conversation between eras that don't always agree, but live together.
Outside, in Praça de São Pedro, the world became noisy again. And yet, that square has a way of embracing. Bernini designed columns like arms, and I like to think he understood people: everyone arrives with a story, a doubt, a request, a gratitude. And the fountains there, always working, have been doing the same thing for centuries: reminding us that time passes, but water persists. Like hope, like faith, like the curiosity that brought you here.
Along the way, we also crossed paths with ancient Roma in full pose: Augusto de Prima Porta, all strategist, all “I know what I'm doing.” And right after, Apollo Belvedere, ideal beauty, almost impossible, like a sculpted dream. It's funny, isn't it? An emperor and a god, side by side, within the same universe. The Vatican collects contrasts like someone collects keys: each one opens a different door within our imagination.
And now, here in Borgo, with Sant’Anna dei Palafrenieri and San Pellegrino no Vaticano nearby, the journey takes on the flavor of a lived street. Borgo is the “between”: between Roma and São Pedro, between the visitor and the destination, between noise and the sacred. And this palace - the Convertendi - is a name that seems like a story in itself. To convert, to change, to turn the page. It doesn't have to be religious conversion. Sometimes, it's just that small, profound change: you leave different from how you entered.
If I could keep this walk in my pocket, I would keep the sound of footsteps on the stones, the echo of the rooms, the silence full of meaning, and that instant when we realize: “I am here.” Because traveling like this isn't just seeing places. It's letting them see us a little too.
So, thank you for walking with me. Truly. You brought the most important part of the tour: your perspective. When you leave and Borgo is behind you, take one thing with you: history doesn't just live in books and high ceilings. It lives in the choices we make after listening, understanding, feeling. And today, among towers, gardens, chapels, squares, and palaces, we did exactly that: we walked through time - and found, in the middle of it, a piece of ourselves.
Until the next corner of the world.
