To witness its vaulted roof and Romanesque frescoed apses glow in such brilliance is like entering heaven itself.

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The extraordinary lobby of the palace is centered on a marble fountain supported by cherubs, while the sky-blue walls are frescoed with cotton-ball clouds, birds, garlands and idealized rural scenes.

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The cardinals begin this process Tuesday afternoon by filing into the frescoed Sistine Chapel singing the Litany of Saints, a hypnotic chant imploring the intercession of saints to help them choose a pope.

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We settled in Verona, where the Alps peter out in the north Italian plain, a small, elegant, conservative city, unquestioningly Catholic and immensely proud of its huge Roman arena and frescoed Renaissance piazzas.

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Among the highlights in the weeklong Pride of the South itinerary: the frescoed, gilded, and columned Mysore Palace, and the 12th-century Chennakesava Temple at Belur, 103 years in the making, with every inch covered in carvings of symbolic animals and episodes from epics.

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Tables and seating have been set under Michelangelo's frescoed ceiling for the cardinals - and special technology has been installed to jam any mobile phones or other devices which could breach the strict secrecy of the process, the BBC's James Robbins reports from Rome.

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Wine Tour Urbano currently takes place in the historic Monserrat district, offering tour participants the opportunity to taste velvety pinot noirs by a Patagonian winery in the lantern-lit cloisters of a 1700s Jesuit church or rich malbecs by a Mendoza bodega at a frescoed, 19th-century pharmacy.

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For more than six centuries, the brilliantly frescoed walls of Florence's Basilica of Santa Croce functioned as what its current rector, Father Antonio Di Marcantonio, calls "medieval PowerPoint": scenes from the Bible and saints' lives illustrating the sermons that Franciscan friars preached to largely illiterate congregations.

WSJ: A Heavenly View From On High | Basilica of Santa Croce | Agnolo Gaddi | By Francis X. Rocca