The colour balance is a little off - the uniforms are red, blue and yellow. The colour scheme is variously claimed to be based on the heraldry of the Medicis and/or the Della Roveres.
@MackReed Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has probably more than you want to know about the weapons of the Swiss Guard. Halberds for show, but modern weapons for other occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
@mackreed @bezt When you're in the Vatican as a tourist, you do in fact sometimes see these guys in these crazy Michelangelo getups* carrying assault rifles (although mostly they try to keep the armed ones out of sight, I think).
@snarkout @MackReed @bezt I had an experience with an armed guard there! The one and only time I visited I was examining a rock wall and had been for a while, kind of scooting along it by crab walking, with my hands all over the wall, probably looking somewhat suspicious because someone very roughly grabbed me by the shoulder, hauled me to my feet, and demanded to know what the fuck I was doing. (In their defense there had been a lot of terrorism scares/threats at the time, and later they told me they had tried to get my attention verbally several times but I was so focused I didn't hear them.)
It was two very stern looking guys. Of course I very excitedly told them I was a geologist, it was the coolest thing, the wall was Cretaceous chalk that gradually got older towards the top of the wall as they had obviously mined deeper into the quarry, look at this fossil blah blah blah. They relaxed pretty quickly -"Oh, so you're an American geek," one of them said - and we had a nice conversation.
It took me a second - and of interest to you - to realize they both were holding guns. One was dressed like your typical Swiss Guard. The other guy, however, was dressed like some kind of fancy policeman in a standard looking blue-black color uniform, a sweater vest, and those fancy black high top sneakers. (My memory supplies that his pants were bloused into his shoes and he had a beret too but that could memory replaced by movie, if you know what I mean.) I don't know if he was a different kind of guard or not, sorry. They were both very stern yet professionally polite and seemed to know each other well, though.
However, they both had what I would have called the same submachine gun*, and police dressed guy also had a holstered pistol. Swiss dressed guy had his free - which he tucked back into his shirt at the end IIRC, but police guy's was on a sling.
But here's the detail that really caught my eye, rather than what their guns were: their weapons were *shiny*. They had a very specific sheen or glow to them. I may not be able to ID an uzi properly but I have been around guns enough to know it was the kind of sheen that a weapon could only get if it's used and cleaned *regularly*, like every day. I'd never seen anything like it before (or since). They must have practiced *all the time*; their target shooting skills must have been *amazing*.
*if pressed I would have said it was an uzi, or what I thought an uzi at the time looked like, which is a different thing
* I know this is an urban myth, but.
It was two very stern looking guys. Of course I very excitedly told them I was a geologist, it was the coolest thing, the wall was Cretaceous chalk that gradually got older towards the top of the wall as they had obviously mined deeper into the quarry, look at this fossil blah blah blah. They relaxed pretty quickly -"Oh, so you're an American geek," one of them said - and we had a nice conversation.
It took me a second - and of interest to you - to realize they both were holding guns. One was dressed like your typical Swiss Guard. The other guy, however, was dressed like some kind of fancy policeman in a standard looking blue-black color uniform, a sweater vest, and those fancy black high top sneakers. (My memory supplies that his pants were bloused into his shoes and he had a beret too but that could memory replaced by movie, if you know what I mean.) I don't know if he was a different kind of guard or not, sorry. They were both very stern yet professionally polite and seemed to know each other well, though.
However, they both had what I would have called the same submachine gun*, and police dressed guy also had a holstered pistol. Swiss dressed guy had his free - which he tucked back into his shirt at the end IIRC, but police guy's was on a sling.
But here's the detail that really caught my eye, rather than what their guns were: their weapons were *shiny*. They had a very specific sheen or glow to them. I may not be able to ID an uzi properly but I have been around guns enough to know it was the kind of sheen that a weapon could only get if it's used and cleaned *regularly*, like every day. I'd never seen anything like it before (or since). They must have practiced *all the time*; their target shooting skills must have been *amazing*.
*if pressed I would have said it was an uzi, or what I thought an uzi at the time looked like, which is a different thing