This ‘Secret Room’ Where Michelangelo Hid Is Full of Jaw-Dropping Sketches—But Why Did He Hide?

Background and insets: Courtesy of Francesco Fanfani via Musei del Bargello, Left lower inset: Public Domain

You can visit the safehouse where Michelangelo holed up like a fugitive fearing for his life, in 1530, to escape the wrath of the Pope.

You can see scrawled on the walls of the cramped, narrow room the master draftsman’s very own prisoner’s graffiti—there are his self-portrait, the Laocoön, even Christ. There is what some experts think is a reproduced head from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.