Vatican City

I came to Vatican City on a cold morning when the light was still low and the cobblestones were wet. Walking into St. Peter's Square for the first time, I didn't expect the scale of it — the colonnade wrapping around like two arms, the obelisk dead centre, and that facade rising at the end of it all. From Kathmandu I'm used to temples that feel intimate, human-sized. This was something different: architecture that wants you to feel small on purpose.

I climbed up inside the dome, which I hadn't planned to do, and that view from the top stopped me cold. The whole oval of the square laid out below, and then Rome spreading in every direction to the mountains on the horizon. The city looked ancient and endless at once. Inside the basilica, I kept stopping at the sculpture — the baldachin over the altar is this enormous bronze canopy, gilded and twisted, and you stand under it and your neck cranes back and there's still more going on above you. The papal tombs and the saints carved into the nave walls each had their own weight and drama, marble drapery folded so convincingly you half expect it to move.

I stayed until dark that night and walked along the Tiber back toward Castel Sant'Angelo. Seeing it flood-lit and reflected in the river, I understood why this city has held onto people's imaginations for so long. Back home we have our own old things, our own sacred geometries. But standing on that riverbank in the cold air watching the fortress glow against the dark sky, I felt genuinely far from Kathmandu — and glad for it.