VATICAN CITY — It is one of the wonders of the world, attracting millions of visitors every year. But those now in Rome hoping to admire the Sistine Chapel will not get their fix of its monumental Michelangelo frescoes.

“Notice is hereby given that the Sistine Chapel will be closed to the public from Monday 28 April 2025 for the requirements of the Conclave,” reads a terse statement on the Vatican Museums’ website.

The conclave, the secret meeting to elect a new leader of the Catholic Church after the death of Pope Francis, starts on May 7, but preparations to host the more than 130 cardinals due to take part take several days.

“To come from so far, to not be able to go into one of the major sites is very disappointing,” said Leonie Shannon, a 67-year-old tourist from Australia.

The chapel’s ceilings are adorned with scenes painted between 1508 and 1512 from the Bible’s Old and New Testaments. The most famous is The Creation of Adam, in which God reaches with his finger to touch the outstretched hand of the first man.

Michelangelo also painted the awe-inspiring Last Judgment on the wall behind the altar, while other Renaissance artists such as Botticelli, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio decorated its side walls.

“This is a truly great work of art that we’ve studied, so we hoped that we could witness it firsthand,” said Guo Feng, one of a group of art students from China. “It’s really unfortunate that we can’t see it on this trip. It’s a big regret for us.”

But many visitors also acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances that required the closure of the most popular part of the Vatican Museums.

“We were a little bit sad (when) we heard the Sistine Chapel was closed, we really wanted to see the Creation of (Adam), right?” said Ahmad Mourad, a visitor from Texas in the US. “But we understand the situation and everything.”

Even without the chapel, the Vatican Museums contain one of the great art collections, stretching from ancient Roman sculptures to 19^th– and 20^th-century masters such as Van Gogh and Matisse.

“(It) would have been amazing to see the Michelangelo, … I mean, that’s stunning. But look, I think we still enjoyed what we saw. There were still many, many, many rooms that we could explore… But yeah, obviously disappointed,” said Australian Sharyn Davis. — Reuters

ROME — US director Alexander Payne will head the main competition jury at this year’s Venice Film Festival, the organizers said on Monday.

Mr. Payne’s films, including the comedies The Holdovers, Sideways, and The Descendants, have been nominated for a total 24 Oscars, including four times for Best Picture and three times for Best Director.

He has won twice for Best Adapted Screenplay.

“It’s an enormous honor and joy to serve on the jury at Venice. Although I share a filmmaker’s ambivalence about comparing films against one another, I revere the Venice Film Festival’s nearly 100-year history of loudly celebrating film as an art form,” Mr. Payne said in a statement.

The 82^nd Venice Film Festival, held on the lagoon city’s Lido island, will run from Aug. 27 to Sept. 6. The movies in competition will be announced in July.

Mr. Payne’s 2017 comedy Downsizing opened the festival in 2017. — Reuters

LIMA — Archaeologists in coastal Peru have discovered the 5,000-year-old remains of a woman who may have belonged to the upper echelons of the ancient Caral civilization, a find they say points to the importance of women in the city some five millennia earlier.

Caral, located some 180 kilometers up the Pacific coast from Lima, is considered the oldest city in the Americas and would have been inhabited at the same time as ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Sumerian civilizations — though unlike these, researchers say it developed in complete isolation.

Aspero, the area in the Caral site where the tomb was found, was formerly used as a municipal dump.

“This is an important burial because it has elements that correspond to a woman of high status,” archeologist David Palomino told Reuters on Thursday, pointing to the way the corpse was wrapped and preservation of her skin, hair, and nails.

The body of the woman, who would have died at around 20 to 35 years of age, was found with a mantle of blue and brown feathers that could come from an Amazonian bird such as a macaw, he said, adding the tomb was surrounded by baskets with offerings, vases, gourds and a toucan’s beak.

Mr. Palomino said the finding showed that “not only men had an important association in this civilization, but this was also complementary with that of women.”

Though researchers do not know the exact date of the burial, the Caral civilization was active around 3,000 BC — Reuters