On Saturday 17 August, I visited the Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Exhibition in The Hague, the Netherlands. It’s here in The Hague until 8 September.

The Grote Kerk is a fabulous location for this exhibition, and really complimented the grandeur of these high quality reproductions.

I enjoyed learning more about the frescos via the app, with a short explanation of each.

What I also appreciated was the opportunity to really get up close and examine the details. So many layers of artistic expression, that we can now gaze on hundreds of years after it was created.

This exhibition has toured the world, and I see on their website it was already in my home city of Brisbane, Australia back in 2021! It was also in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide in 2022.

Have you seen this exhibition? Or perhaps the real thing?

https://sistinechapelexhibit.com

The description of the exhibition first published on TheHagueOnLine:

During July and August,  the doors of the Grote Kerk in The Hague will open for the temporary exhibition Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition. At this exhibition, visitors can get up close and personal with Michelangelo’s most famous frescoes in their original size. The exhibition offers a new look at the famous Vatican ceiling paintings as they are not surrounded by hundreds of visitors in the Grote Kerk and they can be viewed in detail up close instead of 20 meters high, without sacrificing the original atmosphere that a church has to offer. During the exhibition, visitors can also learn more about the creation process and life of Michelangelo.

The paintings have been reproduced with precision thanks to high-quality photography and a special printing technique, so that all the colours and details of Michelangelo’s 34 monumental frescoes are preserved down to the smallest detail. In addition, visitors can receive additional information about what inspired Michelangelo to paint these great works and the techniques he used through a free audio guide app, which they can download directly to their smartphone and listen to again at home. The audio guide is available in Dutch, English, French, Spanish and German.

There is also a video room with a documentary about the challenges Michelangelo faced, how he overcame them, the technologies and materials he had access to, the science behind them and the way he used them. The estimated duration of the experience is 60 to 90 minutes.

Following the success of the exhibition in 33 other cities including Vienna (Austria), Lille (France), Portland (the US), Birmingham (England) and more, production company Special Entertainments Event (SEE™), pioneers in the best themed experiences and traveling exhibitions around the world, in collaboration with Fever, the leading global platform for discovering live entertainment, decided to bring the exhibition to the Netherlands. More than 600,000 tickets have been sold worldwide and the exhibition scores an average of 4.3 out of 5 stars according to visitors.

The exhibition  is open to visitors of all ages from Thursday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. The exhibition is accessible to wheelchair users.

Tickets can now be purchased  from €16 per person for adults. Children between 6 and 17 years old, students, groups and seniors from 65 years old can obtain tickets at a reduced rate.  The free audio guide is available for iOS and Android. It is recommended to download the audio guide before the visit and bring your own headphones.