AP PHOTOS: Sistine Chapel key-keeper opens up after lockdown

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Sistine Chapel reopened to public view last week for the first time since its November coronavirus closure, but for Gianni Crea, the doors to Michelangelo’s magnificent frescoes were never really closed.

Crea is the “clavigero” of the Vatican Museums, the chief key-keeper whose job begins each morning at 5 a.m., opening the doors and turning on the lights through 7 kilometers (4 1/2 miles) of one of the world's greatest collections of art and antiquities.

The Associated Press followed Crea on his rounds the first day the museum reopened to the public, joining him before dawn in the downstairs “bunker” where the 2,797 keys to the Vatican treasures are kept in wall safes overnight. As the keys dangled and jangled from giant keyrings he wears around his wrist, Crea wound his way through the Gallery of Maps, past the famed marble “Laocoön and His Sons" statue and finally to the Sistine Chapel.

There, at a tiny wooden doorway, Crea drew out a white envelope from his suit pocket, ripped it open and pulled out a small silvery-brass key.

Using a small flashlight to guide his way, he slipped the key into the keyhole, turned it gently and creaked open the door to reveal the still-darkened chapel where popes are made during the secret ceremonies that draw their very name — “conclave” — from the crucial role that keys play in them. Cardinals are essentially locked away “with a key” in the Sistine Chapel and the nearby Vatican hotel for the duration of the solemn vote to elect a new pope.

As a result, the Sistine Chapel key is of particular importance and is handled with its own protocol: After the room is shuttered for the day when the last visitor leaves, the key is put back in a new white envelope, sealed, stamped and replaced in the bunker wall safe, with its comings and...