Michelangelo Masterpiece Goes Online

Tourists have been known to topple over backwards on to the marble floor while torturing their necks to study every detail of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the masterpiece on which Michelangelo struggled and cursed for four years.

Now, at the click of a mouse, they will now be able to zoom up to the recently restored ceiling, under which the painter - who only wanted to be a sculptor - spent endless months, between 1508 and 1512.

He lay flat on his back on a specially designed scaffold until, it is said, his assistants had to prise the brush from his cramped fingers at the end of each day's work.

The Vatican is expanding its rather dry website - the 50 million visitors a month may be enthralled by the section headed Vatican Secret Archives, but will find it is still "under construction" after eight years - to include virtual tours of the Sistine Chapel and many of the miles of galleries containing treasures from all over the world.

It is even considering online ticket sales, allowing real visitors to escape one of the most infamous ticket queues in Rome, and an online gift shop.

The Vatican's most famous work of art was created by an artist who never wanted the job.

Michelangelo was notoriously fiery - a contemporary anecdote claimed that he nailed an unfortunate assistant to a board to study anatomical details for a crucifixion scene - and insisted that his proper tool was a chisel. He met his match in an equally towering ego, Pope Julius II, who ordered the artist to Rome and promised to commission for himself the most magnificent sculpted tomb in Christendom. Work on the tomb was continually deferred, while Michelangelo was kept bound to his work on the ceiling.

The online tour is at vatican.va