Night at the Vatican

After the tourists go home, a museum's collection tells its own story

- Cullen Murphy

At the Vatican Museums, the nightly ritual of the keys begins in Room 49A, a tight, windowless chamber, generally referred to as il bunker, which I entered one evening last November from a grassy courtyard as rain began to fall. The keeper of the keys—the clavigero—is a former member of the carabinieri named Gianni Crea. He has a staff of about a dozen, and keeps nearly 3,000 keys in the bunker. Can he match each one to a lock? At the Vatican, yes, he said; he has trouble at home. Some keys, like No. 401, which weighs a pound and opens the main interior door to the oldest of the museum buildings, were forged centuries ago; others resemble keys you’d find in a hardware store or a kitchen drawer. Many have plastic tags with handwritten labels. They open every utility box, every window, every gate and portal.

The heavy bronze doors at the museum’s main entrance are pulled shut every afternoon at 4 p.m. and locked wiTha key numbered 2,000. Over the next two hours, until the exit doors are also closed, the last visitors proceed through the hallways. Behind them, here and there, lights begin to dim. Metal detectors power down. At the glassed-in security station in the Atrium of the Four Gates, departing guards punch time cards. Behind the glass, alongside a crucifix and a photograph of Pope Francis, a flatscreen presents live images from security cameras. The screen gives the enclosure a quiet glow.

Each sector of the museum has its own large key ring, the kind carried by a jailer. On this night, when the last of the visitors had gone, Crea piled a tangle of keys on the counter of the security station, then handed out key rings to his staff. Th e lockdown got under way. He kept a larger set of keys for himself, so that he and I could make our way anywhere.