The Lateran Museum (Museo Lateranense) was a museum founded by the Popes and housed in the Lateran Palace, adjacent to the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, Italy. It ceased to exist in 1970.
Pope Gregory XVI (1831–1846) established the Museo Profano Lateranense (or Museo Gregoriano Profano) in 1844. Its collections initially consisted of statues, bas-relief sculptures and mosaics of the Roman era. The museum was enlarged in 1854 under Pius IX (1846–1878) with the addition of the Museo Pio Cristiano. This collection was assembled by the archaeologists Father Giuseppe Marchi and Giovanni Battista de Rossi. Marchi collected the sculptured monuments of the early Christian period, while de Rossi the ancient Christian inscriptions. A third department of the museum consisted of copies of some of the more important catacomb frescoes. Father Marchi was appointed the director of the new institution. In 1910, under the pontificate of Pius X (1903–1914), the Hebrew Lapidary (Lapidario Ebraico) was established. This section contained 137 inscriptions from ancient Hebrew cemeteries in Rome mostly from via Portuense. The Museo Missionario Etnografico was founded by Pius XI with the documents and relics exhibited in Rome at the Missionary Exposition in 1925, and included historical documents of Missions and relics from the people where these missions took place. The three collections were transferred, under the pontificate of Pope John XXIII (1958–1963), from the Lateran Palace to the Vatican. They were reopened to the public in 1970. Their collections are still called "ex Lateranense" to indicate their former place of display.
The Lateran Palace is now occupied by the Museo Storico Vaticano which illustrates the history of the Papal States. It was moved to the palace in 1987 and inaugurated in 1991.
Vatican City, officially the Vatican City State, is the Holy See's independent city state, an enclave within Rome, Italy. The Vatican City State, also known as The Vatican, became independent from Italy with the Lateran Treaty (1929), and it is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity of international law, which maintains the city state's temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence. With an area of 49 hectares and a population of about 825, it is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population.
Pope Severinus was the bishop of Rome elected in October 638. He was caught up in a power struggle with Emperor Heraclius, who pressured him to accept Monothelitism. Severinus refused, which for over eighteen months hindered his efforts to obtain imperial recognition of his election. His pontificate was finally sanctioned on 28 May 640, but he died two months later.
The Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist in the Lateran, also known as the Papal Archbasilica of Saint John [in] Lateran, Saint John Lateran, or the Lateran Basilica, is the cathedral church of the Diocese of Rome in the city of Rome, and serves as the seat of the Roman Pontiff.
The Vatican Museums are the public art and sculpture museums in the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries including several of the most renowned Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
The Vatican Apostolic Library, more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally established in 1475, although it is much older, it is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. It has 75,000 codices from throughout history, as well as 1.1 million printed books, which include some 8,500 incunabula.
The Lateran Palace, formally the Apostolic Palace of the Lateran, is an ancient palace of the Roman Empire and later the main papal residence in southeast Rome.
Santa Pudenziana is a church of Rome, a basilica built in the 4th century and dedicated to Saint Pudentiana, sister of Saint Praxedes and daughter of Saint Pudens. It is one of the national churches in Rome, associated with Filipinos.
The National Roman Museum is a museum, with several branches in separate buildings throughout the city of Rome, Italy. It shows exhibits from the pre- and early history of Rome, with a focus on archaeological findings from the period of Ancient Rome.
The Pontifical Lateran University, also known as Lateranum, is a pontifical university based in Rome. The university also hosts the central session of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The university is known as "The Pope's University". Its Grand Chancellor is the Vicar General to the Holy Father for the Diocese of Rome. Four of its graduates have been canonized. As of 2014 the Pontifical Lateran university had students from more than a hundred countries. It is also sometimes also known as the Pontifical University of Apollinaire.
The Lateran Obelisk is the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world, and it is also the tallest obelisk in Italy. It originally weighed 413 tonnes, but after collapsing and being re-erected 4 metres (13 ft) shorter, now weighs around 300 tonnes. It is located in Rome, in the square across from the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran and the San Giovanni Addolorata Hospital.
Porta San Pancrazio is one of the southern gates of the Aurelian walls in Rome (Italy).
Early Christian inscriptions are the epigraphical remains of early Christianity. They are a valuable source of information in addition to the writings of the Church Fathers regarding the development of Christian thought and life in the first six centuries of the religion's existence. The three main types are sepulchral inscriptions, epigraphic records, and inscriptions concerning private life.
Pietro Luigi Galletti was an Italian Benedictine, historian and archaeologist; b. Rome in 1724; d. there, 13 December 1790.
Giuseppe Marchi was an Italian Jesuit archæologist who worked on the Catacombs of Rome.
Luigi Gaetano Marini was an Italian natural philosopher, jurist, historian, archaeologist and epigraphist.
The Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology is an official board of the Vatican founded in 1852 by Pope Pius IX for the purpose of promoting and directing excavations in the Catacombs of Rome and on other sites of Christian antiquarian interest, and of safeguarding the objects found during such excavations. In 1925, Pope Pius XI declared that the Commission was Pontifical and its competencies were defined in detail and reaffirmed recently in the conventions between the Holy See and the Italian State.
Giampietro Campana, created marchese di Cavelli (1849), was an Italian art collector who assembled one of the nineteenth century's greatest collection of Greek and Roman sculpture and antiquities. The part of his collection of Hellenistic and Roman gold jewellery conserved in the Musée du Louvre warranted an exhibition devoted to it in 2005-06. He was an early collector of early Italian paintings, the so-called "primitives" of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which were overlooked by his contemporaries. And like many collectors of his generation, he coveted Italian maiolica of the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Papal States under Pope Pius IX assumed a much more modern and secular character than had been seen under previous pontificates, and yet this progressive modernization was not nearly sufficient in resisting the tide of political liberalization and unification in Italy during the middle of the 19th century.
The Vatican Historical Museum is one of the sections of the Vatican Museums. It was founded in 1973 at the behest of Pope Paul VI, and was initially hosted in environments under the Square Garden. In 1987 it was moved to the main floor of the Apostolic Palace of the Lateran and opened in March 1991.
Santi Sergio e Bacco al Foro Romano also called Santi Sergio e Bacco sub Capitolio was an ancient titular church in Rome, now lost. Located in the ruins of the Roman Forum, it had been one of the ancient diaconiae of the city and a collect church for one of the station days of Lent, but it was demolished in the sixteenth century.