Vatican City, officially the Vatican City State, is a landlocked sovereign country, city-state, microstate, and enclave surrounded by, and historically a part of, Rome, Italy. It became independent from Italy in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty, and is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, which is itself a sovereign entity under international law, maintaining the city-state's temporal power, governance, diplomatic, and spiritual independence. The Vatican is also a metonym for the pope, the Holy See, and the Roman Curia.
The national flag of Vatican City was adopted in 1929, the year Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty with Italy, creating the new independent state of Vatican City.
The Vatican Museums are the public museums of Vatican City, enclave of Rome. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most well-known 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 employs 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
The Lateran Museum 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.
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is a scientific academy of the Vatican City, established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences and the study of related epistemological problems. The Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei was founded in 1847 as a more closely supervised successor to the Accademia dei Lincei established in Rome in 1603 by the learned Roman Prince, Federico Cesi (1585–1630), who was a young botanist and naturalist, and which claimed Galileo Galilei as its president. The Accademia dei Lincei survives as a wholly separate institution.
The lira was the currency of the Vatican City between 1929 and 2002. It was not a separate currency but an issue of the Italian lira; the Banca d'Italia produced coins specifically for Vatican City.
The Cappella Paolina is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. It is separated from the Sistine Chapel by the Sala Regia. It is not on any of the regular tourist itineraries.
The Casina Pio IV is a patrician villa in Vatican City which is now home to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The predecessor of the present complex structure was begun in the spring of 1558 by Pope Paul IV in the Vatican Gardens, west of the Cortile del Belvedere. Paul IV commissioned the initial project of the 'Casina del Boschetto', as it was originally called, from an unknown architect; the first mention of the single-storey building can be found on 30 April 1558, and a notice of the following 6 May, says that the Pope spent "two thirds of his time at the Belvedere, where he has begun to build a fountain in the woods".
The Colonna Venus is a Roman marble copy of the lost Aphrodite of Cnidus sculpture by Praxiteles, conserved in the Museo Pio-Clementino as a part of the Vatican Museums' collections. It is now the best-known and perhaps most faithful Roman copy of Praxiteles's original.
The Vatican Railway was opened in 1934 to serve Vatican City and its only station, Vatican City. The main rail tracks are standard gauge and 300 metres (980 ft) long, with two freight sidings, making it the shortest national railway system in the world. Access to the Italian rail network is over a viaduct to Roma San Pietro railway station, and is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty dating from 1929. The tracks and station were constructed during the reign of Pope Pius XI, shortly after the treaty.
The Palazzo Orsini Pio Righetti is a building in the Roman district of Parione. It was built around 1450 and lies on top of the ruins of the Temple of Venus Victrix of the Theatre of Pompey. In the 17th century the facade was redesigned. It overlooks other neighboring areas of Campo de' Fiori and Piazza del Biscione in Rome, Italy.
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 Pontifical Latin American College is one of the Roman Colleges of the Roman Catholic Church, for students from Central and South America. A pontifical college in Rome is a hostel for student priests who pursue higher ecclesiastical studies in various Church universities and institutes.
The Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art is a collection of paintings, graphic art and sculptures in the Vatican Museums.
World Youth Day 2000 was a Catholic youth festival held from 15–20 August 2000 in Rome, Italy.
The Gardens of Vatican City, also informally known as the Vatican Gardens in Vatican City, are private urban gardens and parks which cover more than half of the country, located in the west of the territory and owned by the Pope. There are some buildings, such as Vatican Radio and the Governor's Palace, within the gardens.
The Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosi al Pantheon is one of the Pontifical Academies under the direction of the Holy See. The complete Italian name of the academy, Pontificia Insigne Accademia di Belle Arti e Letteratura dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, includes the adjective insigne (illustrious), often omitted in official English translations. The term Virtuosi al Pantheon is also usually left untranslated, but, in any event, should not be taken in the English musical sense of “virtuoso” but rather “artists of great merit”. The Pantheon in Rome was the historical home of the academy. The term “academy” is meant in the Italian Renaissance definition of the term as an association of learned persons and not an institution of instruction.
The Eastern Catholic canon law is the law of the 23 Catholic sui juris (autonomous) particular churches of the Eastern Catholic tradition. Eastern Catholic canon law includes both the common tradition among all Eastern Catholic Churches, now chiefly contained in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, as well as the particular law proper to each individual sui juris particular Eastern Catholic Church. Oriental canon law is distinguished from Latin canon law, which developed along a separate line in the remnants of the Western Roman Empire, and is now chiefly codified in the 1983 Code of Canon Law.
Vatican City has become one of the world's most striking architecture through several centuries and a world cultural heritage. The area of the Vatican is small, which is made up of several famous landmarks. The architecture of Vatican City, dominated by religious architecture, is characterized by several architectural styles such as Roman, Baroque, and Gothic with the different time, most representative the buildings are concentrated in the medieval period and the 16th–18th centuries.
Anima Mundi is a museum of ethnological art and artefacts in the Vatican City. It is part of the Vatican Museums.
