Black smoke rose from the chapel's smokestack, signifying no choice had been made, and the cardinals adjourned for the day.

WSJ: With Speech, Cardinal Set Path to Papacy

But you can steal away from all that and refresh yourself in the cool and dark of the chapel beneath the Black Madonna and the lamps hung there by Crusaders and the bell that was said to ring miraculously every time storm-tossed sailors were saved by the Virgin of Rocamadour.

FORBES: How foie gras was my valley

In 1968, a year after he finished his legendary series of black murals for his eponymous chapel at the Menil Collection in Houston and just a few months after suffering an aneurysm that nearly killed him, Mark Rothko turned to painting smaller pictures in acrylic on paper laid down on canvas.

ECONOMIST: Contemporary art stumbles

If the ballot is inconclusive, black smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel.

FORBES: How Is A New Pope Elected?

If a round of voting comes up short, ballots are burned and black smoke rises from a stovepipe installed at the chapel.

WSJ: Vatican Begins Countdown to Conclave

Black smoke also billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday night, after the cardinals failed to choose a new pope in the first vote of their conclave.

CNN: March 13, 2013 -- Updated 1133 GMT (1933 HKT)

You don't have to believe that legend, but Henry Plantagenet, later Henry II of England, husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the father of Lionhearted, did, and he came here to pray to the Black Madonna that still looks down on those who come to the little chapel by the tomb where the hermit's body was found.

FORBES: How foie gras was my valley

The smoke that will drift out of the chapel's chimney early in the evening is likely to be black - meaning no pope has been elected.

BBC: Rome conclave: Cardinals begin voting for new Pope