The Vatican – A Country Within a City
It is normal to stand in an immigration queue at the airport with your passport and visa to enter a country you travel to. But what is unusual is to stand in a queue alongside a high wall with just your camera and a waist pouch to enter a country. And that is how you enter the Vatican. An independent country, and the seat of the highest Catholic Church official, the pope.
With a meagre population of 805, an area of 49 hectares (121 acres) contains the entire Vatican, making it the smallest country in the world. Both by area and population. Rome enclaves this independent city-state.
The Lateran Treaty of 1929 gave the Vatican its independence. For over a millennium, Papacy ruled Rome and acted as the global headquarters of the Catholic Church. The treaty formalised that status and gave the world a new state that didn’t carry the baggage of erstwhile Papal States.
Enter the Vatican
A normal day sees a throng of travellers queueing up to see the magical world of the Vatican. While the queue moves fast, the sheer length of the queue takes away an hour or two waiting to enter. Once inside, your guide will unravel the mysteries of this pontifical state. The country comprises St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, and Apostolic Palace, besides the homes of its residents.
In most places, the Vatican allows photography. A notable exception being the Sistine Chapel. The sale of postage stamps, souvenirs, museum admission fees, and sale of publications support the economy of the Vatican City. Perched on Vatican Hill, it borrows its name from it.
Swiss Guards in their colourful attire guard the entrances of the Vatican. Earlier, they performed a ceremonial role. But following the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life in 1981, the emphasis shifted to enhanced training in unarmed combat and small arms.
As you enter from the north-northwest, a vast lobby greets you. Its ceiling dome, three-storeys high. The lobby acts as the ante-room to the massive museums complex of the Vatican. To enter, you must have a valid ticket for Sistine Chapel and the Museums. Your tour inside is a sweeping arc from north-northwest to the east, where St. Peter’s Basilica is.
Sculptures on display in Vatican Museum 
Sculpture on display in Vatican Museum 
Sculpture on display in Vatican Museum
Treasures Within
The Vatican Museums display works collected by the Catholic Church over the centuries. The exhibits include many renowned Roman sculptures and important Renaissance masterpieces. Though the museums contain over 70,000 works, only about 20,000 are on display. 640 people work here. The Sistine Chapel with its ceiling painted by Michelangelo and the Stanza di Raffaello decorated by Raphael are on the tour route through the museums.
One of the largest museums in the world, it also was the third most-visited with 6.88 million visitors in 2019. There are 54 galleries in the museum, with Sistine Chapel being its last gallery.
The Last Supper 
Flat ceiling painted to give 3D effect 
Another piece of art exhibited in the Vatican Museum 
Exquisite carving
While we are on museum-related statistics, let me share other interesting statistics of the Vatican. Since the Vatican confers citizenship for roles reserved for men, the male-female ratio here is skewed. It works out to several men per woman. Petty crimes against tourists like purse snatching, cheating, etc. give the city-state one of the highest crimes rates. The Vatican is also a world leader in per capita wine consumption. And then there is the ‘Popes per square kilometre’ statistic that works out to over 2 since the area of the state is less than half a square kilometre.
St. Peter’s Basilica and the Italian Border
St. Peter’s, a Renaissance-style church, is also the burial site of Saint Peter, the chief apostle of Jesus. Michelangelo and Bernini were amongst the posse of architects who designed this gigantic basilica. Why so many architects? Well, it took 120 years (1506-1626) to build this sprawling edifice.
Its 448-feet high dome, the tallest in the world, dominates the Roman skyline. While the tour ends here and you exit through the Basilica, in reality, that is the proper approach. A forecourt with two colonnaded sections, one, a trapezoid, and the other, an oval, marks it. Known as St. Peter’s Square, a white line at the edge of the square separates the territories of the Vatican and Italy.
Basilica’s nave is cavernous. So massive that people who enter seem to shrink as everything around is oversized. UNESCO inscribed this superstructure, along with the entire state of the Vatican, as a world heritage site in 1984. It is the only instance of the inscription of an entire country.
I had mentioned in my post about Rome these articles will push you into planning a trip. If I was right, comment below. Next week, we travel more in Italy.
