Looking up at Michelangelo's frescos on the ceiling, we could see seven Hebrew prophets - Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Jonah and Zechariah. In the four corners between the shoulders of adjoining arches, we could spot "Moses with the bronze serpent" and "Esther slaying Haman".
What made viewing these stunning images across the 800sq m ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City) all the more enthralling, however, was that we could savour them in relative solitude and silence. There were just four of us in the chapel, plus our guide, and on the other side of the room a few guards.
As the fifth most visited art museum in the world, the Sistine Chapel does not spring to mind as a place in which Michelangelo's stunning biblical frescos can be studied in such tranquility. Some 17,000 visitors traipse and jostle their way through the Vatican Museum's 1,400 rooms every day.
Yet it is possible to enjoy an exclusive visit to the chapel - if you take advantage of the entrepreneurial enterprise of a Rome-based Irish woman, Helen Donegan.
Private tours have been made discreetly available for royalty, foreign heads of state and assorted celebrities for years. Donegan was seeking to arrange a special visit for a disabled friend when she discovered that it was possible to arrange exclusive viewings after the official closing time. She has been doing so, professionally, ever since. And, she says, they are as popular with Jews as they are with Christians.
Getting there
Package: Sistine Chapel/ Vatican Tours start from ¤50 (£39)per person including entrance and guided three-hour tour. Other VIP tours range from ¤250 to ¤350. There's no waiting in line, no crowds and you jump straight to the front of the queue. Price includes admission tickets and at least 30 minutes in the Sistine Chapel. VIP private tours of The Colosseum plus ancient Rome include scouring the depths of the dungeons before working your way to the upper levels that were previously off-limits but which are now open subject to special reservation. From E55 per person, www.italywithus.com
Fly: EasyJet.com flies to Rome from £34.99 one-way.
According to the art historian Enrico Bruschini, Michelangelo used Jewish symbols and allusions in the paintings to illustrate reconciliation between Christians and Jews.
In a depiction of the Garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit which the serpent hands to Eve is a fig, as in Jewish tradition, rather than the apple of the Christian one. And in the depiction of the Last Judgment, Michelangelo painted two Jews, identified by their hats, one double-pointed and the other yellow, which Jews were forced to wear.
Sharp-eyed Jewish visitors may also note the Hebrew letters aleph and ayin which, before centuries of grime were wiped away, had appeared to be the Greek alpha and omega. The chapel floor features Stars of David and its architect, Baccio Pontellim, is said to have envisioned it as a copy of Solomon's temple.
Rabbi Benjamin Blech, an associate professor of Talmud at New York's Yeshiva University and the co-author of The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican, says the genius of Michelangelo was to deliver several layers of meaning that can be interpreted in terms of either Christianity or Judaism. Five hundred years ago, the artist was reminding Christians that their religion was based upon Judaism.
