But no: "Look, a woman! And another one!" two tourists nudge each other.
"Christina of Sweden" and "Charlotte of Cyprus" are emblazoned in Latin on two rather plain sarcophagi, in close proximity to the burial chapel of Benedict XVI. Two women's tombs in the papal basilica, the world-famous burial place of the Vicars of Christ?
"There are actually four tombs of important Christian women in St Peter's Basilica," explains Pietro Zander, head of the Vatican's cathedral construction workshop. The fact that the grottoes under St Peter's Basilica are the sole final resting place of popes is a tradition that only began with the burial of Pius X in 1914.
And Charlotte of Cyprus (1444-1487) and Christina of Sweden (1626-1689) had already been lying there for centuries. The tombs of Mary Clementine Stuart (1702-1735) and Matilda of Canossa (1046-1115) can also be found at the top of the basilica; all four are not saints, but they represent important noble families - and a world-historical event.
Defender of the faith was brought to the papal basilica
"Matilda of Canossa was the great patron saint of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages," says Pietro Zander. Canossa? Yes, exactly: the "walk to Canossa": in the so-called investiture dispute over the right to appoint bishops, Henry IV had wanted to assert himself against Pope Gregory VII - and was excommunicated, which threatened to cost him all his power. The only way out he saw was to go to the ancestral castle of Margravine Mathilde, where Gregory was a guest.
The scene from 1077 is captured on Matilda's tomb relief in the right aisle of St Peter's Basilica: Henry IV kneels in penitential garb before the Pope, while Matilda extends her hand to the king from the right. It was also due to her intercession that Gregory VII lifted the ecclesiastical ban on the German ruler.
Matilda's statue above the sarcophagus shows her with a sceptre, St Peter's key and the papal crown "tiara". After her death in 1115, she was buried in an abbey near Mantua. However, in 1634, Urban VIII brought the relics of the defender of the faith to the papal basilica.
Just a few steps away is the monument to Christina of Sweden, whose mortal remains rest in the grottoes. The daughter of King Gustav Adolf II assumed the throne at the age of 18. Ten years later, she abdicated, became a Catholic and fled to Rome in 1655, where the eccentric woman was celebrated as a "trophy of the Counter-Reformation". Her story made it to the big screen - albeit with a great deal of fantasy: in "Queen Christine" (1933), Greta Garbo plays the monarch as a bluestocking in men's clothing.
Christina's memorial shrine in St Peter's Basilica forms an almost perfect triangle together with the monument to Matilda of Canossa and the funerary chapel for John Paul II (1978-2005). The Polish pontiff was reburied there after his canonisation.
The last Stuart queen
Previously, his tomb was in the Vatican Grottoes: Where the German Pope Benedict XVI was laid to rest in early 2023 - again "eye to eye" with the sarcophagi of Christina of Sweden and Charlotte of Lusignan-Savoy, deposed Queen of Cyprus.
Forced from the throne by her scheming half-brother, abandoned by her husband, impoverished and humiliated, three popes took care of her and honoured her with a royal funeral in the Vatican Grottoes.
The fourth woman buried in St Peter's Basilica also shared a rather sad fate: Maria Clementina, granddaughter of the last Polish King John III Sobieski, married the exiled English pretender to the throne James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), descendant of the legendary Catholic Queen Mary Stuart, in Rome.
When Maria Clementina died at the age of just 32, Clement XII ordered a funeral service as bombastic as if a pope had died.
The funerary monument to England's last Catholic titular queen can be found in the left aisle of St Peter's Basilica, directly above the staircase to the dome.