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1929: The independent state of the Vatican comes into existence. 1934: The first and the only railway station was opened. 1950: Declared a Holy Year by Pope Pius XII. 1943: During World War 2, Vatican city remained neutral and while the German troops occupied the city of Rome, the Vatican City wasn’t occupied.
Aug 4, 2015 · The Vatican remains the home of the pope and the Roman Curia, and the spiritual center for some 1.2 billion followers of the Catholic Church. The world’s smallest independent nation-state, it ...
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Map of Vatican City, highlighting notable buildings and the Vatican gardens. The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up ...
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- HISTORY Vault: The Last Pope?
Explore 10 things you may not know about the seat of the Catholic Church.
1. Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.
Encircled by a 2-mile border with Italy, Vatican City is an independent city-state that covers just over 100 acres, making it one-eighth the size of New York’s Central Park. Vatican City is governed as an absolute monarchy with the pope at its head. The Vatican mints its own euros, prints its own stamps, issues passports and license plates, operates media outlets and has its own flag and anthem. One government function it lacks: taxation. Museum admission fees, stamp and souvenir sales, and contributions generate the Vatican’s revenue.
2. St. Peter’s Basilica sits atop a city of the dead, including its namesake’s tomb.
A Roman necropolis stood on Vatican Hill in pagan times. When a great fire leveled much of Rome in A.D. 64, Emperor Nero, seeking to shift blame from himself, accused the Christians of starting the blaze. He executed them by burning them at the stake, tearing them apart with wild beasts and crucifying them. Among those crucified was St. Peter—disciple of Jesus Christ, leader of the Apostles and the first bishop of Rome—who was supposedly buried in a shallow grave on Vatican Hill. By the fourth century and official recognition of the Christian religion in Rome, Emperor Constantine began construction of the original basilica atop the ancient burial ground with what was believed to be the tomb of St. Peter at its center. The present basilica, built starting in the 1500s, sits over a maze of catacombs and St. Peter’s suspected grave.
Vatican City
Do 900-year-old prophetic visions by Saint Malachy suggest that Pope Francis is the last in a holy line that stretches back nearly 2,000 years?
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Adoremus, February 2010. On November 29, 1964 — a year after the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was enacted — the “New Mass”, as it was then called, was ...
Apr 14, 2014 · Ask anyone what they know about the Vatican City, and you’re probably going to get some very familiar answers: “It’s the home of the pope,” “it’s the world’s smallest country,” or “it’s where Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Catholic Church’s mother church, is located.”. True enough, the origins of the Vatican City, a ...
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5 days ago · Vatican City, landlocked ecclesiastical state, seat of the Roman Catholic Church, and an enclave in Rome, situated on the west bank of the Tiber River. Vatican City is the world’s smallest fully independent nation-state. Its medieval and Renaissance walls form its boundaries except on the southeast at St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro).
