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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 ...
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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- 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.
- 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.
- Caligula captured the obelisk that stands in St. Peter’s Square. Roman Emperor Caligula built a small circus in his mother’s gardens at the base of Vatican Hill where charioteers trained and where Nero is thought to have martyred the Christians.
- For nearly 60 years in the 1800s and 1900s, popes refused to leave the Vatican. Popes ruled over a collection of sovereign Papal States throughout central Italy until the country was unified in 1870.
6 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).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 1, 2023 · During the Roman empire, the Romans referred to this area as Vaticanum, and this was where the rich and powerful built their villas and gardens. The emperor Caligula (third emperor of Rome, 37 – 41 CE) built a large circus there. A Brief History of Vatican City - Before the Basilica, there was Caligula's Circus.
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.
Founded in 910, the Congregation of Cluny, which made rapid progress in the 11th century, prepared France to play an important part in the reformation of the Church undertaken in the second half of the 11th century by a monk of Cluny, Gregory VII, and gave the Church two other popes after him, Urban II and Pascal II.
