21st-century pilgrims

The tourists who flock to galleries in Paris, Florence and Rome are like medieval shrine-visitors, says Martin Gayford. Most don’t care about art, and are only there out of duty

Last month in Rome I was standing in St Peter’s, in front of Michelangelo’s famous early masterpiece the ‘Pietá’. This, I might add, is by no means an easy thing to do in July. At any one time there was a jostling scrum of 50 to 100 visitors around that sculpture.

The magnet that draws so many to that side-chapel in St Peter’s is of course the name of Michelangelo, ‘Divine’ even to his contemporaries. But it isn’t just any old Michelangelo that has this mesmerising effect. In Rome you can have his ‘Risen Christ’ in Santa Maria sopra Minerva to yourself on most days, and in Florence there is a clutch of his sculptures in the Bargello that attract no attention to compare with the throngs around the ‘David’ in the Accademia.