Located in Vatican City just off St. Peter Square lies one of the plainest and most

uninteresting buildings you might never find. It has no adornments and it's just a

solid beige color. However, inside that bland structure you will find one of humanity's greatest artistic achievements, and to enjoy it, you just might get a sore neck.

Learn more about the Sistine Chapel, the building, the art, and its history, on this episodeus, the fourth.

Born Dela Roveri in 1414 in Genoa.

He was elected Pope in 1471.

He selected the people name Sixtus, which was a really odd choice because it hadn't been used by a Pope in almost a thousand years.

To provide an overview of what was happening at this time, Rome was a part of the Papal States, which was the territory controlled directly by the Pope.

At the Vatican, the current St. Peter's Basilica hadn't been built yet.

The primary church was what we would now call Old St. Peter's,

which was the original church built on the site by Emperor Constantine.

Old St. Peter's was much smaller than the current St. Peter's, and it was also decrepit

and falling apart.

However, it would be decades before construction on the new

building would start and over a century before it would be completed, but that's a story

for a different episode. One of the parts of the Papal Court was known as the

Papal Chapel. The term chapel here is the name of a group of people.

The Papal Chapel consisted of the priests and other assistants, both clergy and lay people, who are responsible for performing religious services.

There were about 200 people in the Papal Chapel during the reign of Sixtus the fourth.

The Papal Chapel assembled almost every week and full. Some of these were major holiday masses like Christmas

and Easter, and others were smaller affairs. Many of these masses were held in the Capella

Majori or the Great Chapel. Like old St. Peter's Basilica, it too was in a state of disrepair.

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