The Sala di Costantino (Constantine's Hall), one of Raphael's four Stanze (Rooms) in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, now shines in all its former glory after a restoration lasting 10 years.
    The space, the biggest of the Stanzas, was called after the Roman emperor who made Christianity the State religion and boasts some of the finest frescoes of a young Raphael.
    The four Raphael Rooms Stanze di Raffaello) form a suite of reception rooms in the Apostolic Palace, now part of the Vatican Museums, in Vatican City.
    They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop.
    Together with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.
    The Stanze, as they are commonly called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II.
    He commissioned Raphael, then a relatively young artist from Urbino, and his studio in 1508 or 1509 to redecorate the existing interiors of the rooms entirely.
    It was possibly Julius' intent to outshine the apartments of his predecessor (and rival) Pope Alexander VI, as the Stanze are directly above Alexander's Borgia Apartment.

They are on the second floor, overlooking the south side of the Belvedere Courtyard.
    Running from east to west, as a visitor would have entered the apartment, but not following the sequence in which the Stanze were frescoed, the rooms are the Sala di Costantino ("Hall of Constantine"), the Stanza di Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"), the Stanza della Segnatura ("Room of the Signatura"), and the Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo ("The Room of the Fire in the Borgo").
    They are regarded as among the peaks of Italy's High Renaissance.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA