46 Fun Facts About Vatican City

On the bank of which river does Vatican City sit, as an enclave inside the Italian capital?

The Tiber. Vatican City lies on its west bank, and its walls stop at St Peter's Square, where only a white line on the paving separates the state from Italy.

Which 1929 agreement between the Holy See and Italy created the modern state of Vatican City?

The Lateran Treaty, signed by Mussolini and the pope's secretary of state, ended a standoff of nearly 60 years in which the popes refused to recognise Italy or leave the Vatican.

Vatican City is the world's smallest country; which country is the second smallest?

Monaco, at about two square km, is still more than four times bigger than Vatican City, which is so small that nearly everything it uses, water and power included, comes in from Italy.

Which painter frescoed the papal apartments in the Vatican that include The School of Athens?

Raphael began the rooms in his mid-twenties as the pope's private apartments and was still at work on them when he died in 1520, leaving his assistants to finish the last.

What kind of state is Vatican City politically?

An absolute elective monarchy: the pope holds all legislative, executive and judicial power and nobody inherits it, yet he leaves the daily running of the state to a governorate he appoints.

How does a person normally become a citizen of Vatican City?

By holding a post there. Citizenship comes with certain jobs and usually ends with them, so a guard or diplomat who leaves the pope's service normally gives it up.

Which currency does Vatican City use?

The euro. An old currency pact with Italy carried over when the lira went, so the Vatican uses the euro without formally joining the eurozone and even mints its own coins.

Which phrase does a cardinal proclaim from the balcony of St Peter's to announce a new pope?

Habemus papam, 'we have a pope'. The senior cardinal deacon says it from the central balcony, and the new pope then steps out to bless the city and the world.

Which pope founded the Swiss Guard on 22 January 1506?

Julius II, the 'warrior pope' who led his armies in person, wanted the most feared soldiers in Europe at his own door; the first 150 Swiss marched into Rome that January.

Swiss Guard recruits must first complete which course back home?

Army basic training, in Switzerland's own forces. Recruits must also be single, though after five years a guard may marry if he signs on for three more.

What traditional pole weapon do Swiss Guards still carry alongside modern firearms?

The halberd. Legend credits the striped uniform that goes with it to Michelangelo, but it was designed in the 1910s by the guard's own commander.

In which language are commands given in the pope's Guard?

Guards swear their oath in their own language - German, French, Italian or Romansh - while the state's laws are written in Italian.

Which pope disbanded the Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard in 1970, leaving only the Swiss Guard?

Paul VI swept away the papal court's military pageantry after the Second Vatican Council: only the Swiss Guard survived as a military corps, and the gendarmes became a civilian police force.

What is the Vatican's only aviation facility?

A heliport, tucked against the western wall. With no room for a runway the pope leaves by helicopter, and since the border is metres away every flight is technically international.

For most of its history, what has the Vatican's little railway station mainly handled?

Freight. The station opened in the 1930s, yet no pope boarded a train there until John XXIII set off on a pilgrimage in 1962, almost thirty years later.

What is the name of the Vatican's daily newspaper?

L'Osservatore Romano, 'the Roman observer', has appeared since 1861, which makes the paper 68 years older than the state it is published in.

Which radio pioneer organised Vatican Radio?

Guglielmo Marconi built the station for the pope and stood at the microphone to introduce the first papal broadcast himself, in February 1931.

Which papal symbol is destroyed or defaced when a pope dies or resigns?

The Fisherman's Ring was once the seal on a pope's letters, so it was destroyed at his death to prevent forgeries. Benedict XVI's was merely scored with a cross when he resigned.

Which door of St Peter's Basilica is kept walled up and opened only in Jubilee years?

The Holy Door is sealed with mortar from the inside between Jubilees, which normally come round every 25 years. Pilgrims who pass through it in a Holy Year are granted an indulgence.

Which emperor began the chariot circus, later named for Nero, on the site of today's Vatican?

Caligula laid it out on land that had been his mother's and shipped an obelisk from Egypt to stand at its centre: the same one that now rises in St Peter's Square.

Which pope moved the Egyptian obelisk to its present spot in the centre of St Peter's Square in 1586?

Sixtus V gave the job to his architect Domenico Fontana in 1586, and went on to raise three more ancient obelisks at other landmarks around Rome.

After returning from which French city in 1377 did the popes make the Vatican their main residence?

Avignon. The popes spent nearly seventy years there, and when they came home to a decayed Rome they settled beside St Peter's rather than in their old palace across the city.

Which pope, the last ruler of the Papal States, called himself a 'prisoner in the Vatican' after 1870?

Pius IX rejected the settlement Italy offered him and shut himself inside the Vatican in protest, setting a pattern: no pope set foot outside it for the next 59 years.

Which pope chose to live in the Vatican's guesthouse instead of the papal apartments?

Francis took a suite in the guesthouse where cardinals lodge during a conclave and stayed for his whole reign, just as in Buenos Aires he had passed up the archbishop's residence for a plain flat.

What was Vatican City's policy during the Second World War?

Neutrality. German and then Allied troops occupied Rome all around it, yet neither army entered the Vatican, where the vastly outnumbered Swiss Guard had taken up defensive positions.

In which US city was Pope Leo XIV, elected in May 2025, born?

Chicago. Robert Prevost left it for Peru, where he served as a missionary and later a bishop and took Peruvian citizenship, before becoming the first pope born in the United States.

What status does the Holy See hold at the United Nations?

Permanent observer. The Holy See has never applied to join, but since 1964 it has sat in on debates and may speak and co-sponsor resolutions without voting on them.

The present St Peter's Basilica replaced a fourth-century church built for which Roman emperor?

Constantine began the first St Peter's. Charlemagne was crowned emperor in it on Christmas Day 800, and it stood for almost twelve centuries before the popes began pulling it down in 1506.

Until 2019, the Vatican's central archive carried which word in its official name?

Secret. The word only ever meant that the archive was the pope's own private one, and scholars have been allowed in since 1881; it was renamed the Apostolic Archive all the same.

What did excavations beneath St Peter's Basilica uncover in the 1940s?

A street of Roman tombs, once an open-air cemetery beside the circus. Under the high altar the diggers found a shrine that Christians had venerated as the apostle's grave since the second century.

Which sculptor designed St Peter's Square and its great curving colonnades?

Gian Lorenzo Bernini ringed the square with colonnades four columns deep, meant as the arms of the Church reaching out to embrace the crowd.

Which Michelangelo sculpture stands in a chapel of St Peter's Basilica?

The Pietà. Michelangelo was in his early twenties when he carved it, and he took the rare step of signing it: his name runs along the strap across Mary's chest.

After which pope, who had it built between 1473 and 1481, is the Sistine Chapel named?

Sixtus IV built it as his court chapel and never saw its famous ceiling, painted a generation after his death. Every conclave since 1878 has met beneath it.

Which fresco did Michelangelo paint on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel?

The Last Judgment. He returned more than twenty years after finishing the ceiling and filled the wall with nudes, which so troubled the Church that draperies were later painted over many of them.

What signal tells the crowd in St Peter's Square that a conclave has elected a new pope?

White smoke, from the burning of the cardinals' ballots. Its colour has been hard to read more than once, so since 2005 the bells of St Peter's ring as well.

Which Renaissance painter worked on the Sistine Chapel's wall frescoes in the early 1480s, long before Michelangelo's ceiling?

Sandro Botticelli was one of a team of masters summoned to Rome to cover the walls with scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ, a generation before Michelangelo painted the ceiling above.

The Vatican Museums trace their origin to which sculpture, unearthed in a Roman vineyard in 1506?

Laocoön and His Sons: a Trojan priest and his two boys crushed by sea serpents. It was recognised on the spot as the masterpiece the Roman writer Pliny had praised, and the pope bought it at once.

In 2024 the Vatican Museums drew 6.8 million visitors; which was the only art museum to draw more?

The Louvre. The Vatican's route keeps its biggest draw for the very end: every visitor has to walk the length of the museums to reach the Sistine Chapel, the last room.

Where was the Vatican Observatory moved in the 1930s to escape Rome's light pollution?

Castel Gandolfo, the popes' summer retreat in the hills. Within thirty years the city lights had caught up with it too, so the Vatican's astronomers now observe from a mountaintop in Arizona.

The word conclave, for the meeting of cardinals that elects a pope, comes from two ancient words meaning what?

With a key. When the cardinals dithered for more than two years after 1268, local officials locked them in, took off the roof and cut them to bread and water; locking the electors in became the rule.

The Vatican flag's yellow and white were adopted in 1808 to tell the pope's loyal troops from those absorbed into whose army?

Napoleon's. Until then the papal colours had been red and gold; the new pair took the gold and silver of St Peter's keys, which still cross on the flag today.

Which pope built the Leonine Wall around the Vatican after Muslim raiders sacked Old St Peter's in 846?

Leo IV. St Peter's had stood outside Rome's ancient walls for five centuries, an easy target, and the quarter he enclosed is still called the Leonine City after him.

The obelisk in St Peter's Square originally came from which Egyptian city?

Heliopolis, the city of the sun god, on the Roman writer Pliny's word. A Roman emperor had the obelisk shipped to Rome, and it stood on one spot for fifteen centuries before being hauled to the middle of the square.

About half of Vatican City's territory is taken up by what?

Gardens. They go back to 1279, when a pope who had just moved in walled the area off and planted an orchard.

Which cardinal administers the Vatican between the death of a pope and the election of his successor?

The camerlengo. He looks after the Holy See's property and rights while the throne is empty, then helps to run the conclave that brings his brief authority to an end.

The stripes of the Swiss Guard's dress uniform include the colours of which family of Renaissance popes?

The Medici, alongside the della Rovere, the family of the pope who founded the guard. It was a Medici pope the guards died defending in their bloodiest stand.