Walk the Vatican & Prati,
your way.

The Vatican is the only neighbourhood in the world that is also a sovereign country. 0.49 square kilometres of land - smaller than the Mall in Washington, smaller than a typical golf course - is the headquarters of the Catholic Church and the world's smallest internationally-recognised state. About 825 people hold Vatican citizenship; about 6.8 million visit the Museums every year. Walk the neighbourhood and you are walking through an unusual combination: the Christian Church's organisational centre, the largest single concentration of Renaissance and Baroque art in the world, and (across the river to the east) a perfectly ordinary middle-class Roman neighbourhood that grew up to support the visitors.

From Roman cemetery to Constantine's basilica

The Vatican Hill was, in Roman times, the marshy west-bank outskirts of the city - a chariot-racing circus (the Circus of Caligula, on which Nero later persecuted Christians), a cemetery, the gardens of imperial estates. Saint Peter was crucified upside-down in the Circus around 64 AD (during Nero's persecution after the Great Fire of Rome) and reportedly buried in the adjacent cemetery. The community of early Christians maintained the burial site as a shrine.

The Emperor Constantine - having converted to Christianity in 312 AD - levelled the Vatican cemetery and built a basilica directly over Peter's tomb between 319 and 333 AD. The Old St Peter's was the largest church in Christendom for over a thousand years - 110 metres long, with a coffered nave ceiling, marble columns recycled from earlier Roman buildings, and the tomb of Peter directly under the high altar. The basilica was the centre of Western Christianity through the medieval period.

The new basilica, 1506-1626

By 1500 the Old St Peter's was crumbling. Pope Julius II decided to demolish it and build a new basilica in the Renaissance style. The architects came one after another: Bramante (1506-1514) designed the Greek-cross plan; Raphael (1514-1520) modified it; Michelangelo (1546-1564, in his 70s and 80s) returned to Bramante's vision and designed the dome; Carlo Maderno (1606-1612) extended the nave to the Latin-cross form and designed the facade; Bernini (1626-1680) added the interior fittings - the Baldacchino, the Chair of Peter, the side chapels, and the great St Peter's Square colonnade outside.

The basilica was consecrated in 1626. It is the largest church in Christendom (15,160 sq m of interior, capacity 60,000+) and contains some of the most important Renaissance and Baroque art in the world: Michelangelo's Pietà (1499, the only sculpture he ever signed - the signature is on the strap across the Virgin's chest); Bernini's Baldacchino (1623-1634, the 28-metre bronze canopy over the high altar); the Chair of Saint Peter (Bernini, 1647-1653, gilded bronze chair enclosing a 6th-century wooden relic); the dome ceiling mosaics (1605-1612, designed by Cavalier d'Arpino); and 91 marble tombs of popes from Saint Peter to Benedict XVI.

The Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel

The Vatican Museums - 7 km of corridors, 70,000 works on display from a collection of 200,000 - grew from the papal collections of antiquities and Renaissance art accumulated over 500 years. The Sistine Chapel - built 1473-1481 under Sixtus IV - is the most-famous space: Michelangelo's ceiling (1508-1512) covering 500 square metres with the Genesis cycle and Old Testament prophets, and the Last Judgement (1536-1541, painted by Michelangelo in his 60s on the altar wall, depicting the Second Coming of Christ at the centre with the damned tumbling down on the right and the saved rising on the left).

The Vatican Museums also hold the Raphael Rooms (the apartments Raphael frescoed for Julius II 1508-1514, including the "School of Athens" - Plato and Aristotle walking together, surrounded by other ancient philosophers, with Raphael's contemporaries' faces inserted; Bramante is Euclid, Michelangelo is Heraclitus brooding in the foreground), the Pinacoteca (the gallery of paintings - Caravaggio, Giotto, Raphael's Transfiguration), the Egyptian and Etruscan museums, and the Pio-Clementine sculpture gallery (the Laocoön group, the Apollo Belvedere, the Belvedere Torso).

The 1929 Lateran Treaty and Vatican City

For most of the medieval and Renaissance periods the Pope was both a spiritual leader and a temporal ruler - the Papal States covered much of central Italy. The 1870 unification of Italy ended the Papal States; the Pope retreated to the Vatican and refused to recognise the Italian state. The standoff lasted 59 years. In 1929 Pius XI and Mussolini negotiated the Lateran Treaty, which created Vatican City as a sovereign state, recognised Italian sovereignty over the rest of the former Papal States, and made Catholicism the official Italian religion (until the 1984 revision of the Concordat removed that clause). Vatican City has been a sovereign state since.

Today Vatican City has its own postage stamps, currency (the Euro since 2002, with Vatican-design coins), passport (the smallest issuance of any state), gendarmerie, fire brigade, supermarket, pharmacy, and railway station (one platform, used about once a year). The Swiss Guards - the volunteer Swiss soldiers who have protected the Pope since 1506 - wear the colourful uniforms (allegedly designed by Michelangelo but probably not) at all public ceremonies. The Pope himself - currently Pope Leo XIV (elected May 2025, the first American Pope) - holds public audiences in St Peter's Square on Wednesdays at 09:30 (free, ticket required).

Castel Sant'Angelo and the Passetto

The cylindrical fortress on the west bank of the Tiber was built 134-139 AD as the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian (the same Hadrian who built the Pantheon). Hadrian's ashes were placed in the central chamber; his successor Antoninus Pius added a temple on top. The building was converted into a papal fortress in the medieval period - the Aurelian Walls were extended to include it, and the Passetto di Borgo (a fortified covered walkway, 800 metres long, raised above the street) was built linking the Vatican to the Castle so that popes could flee here in case of attack on the Vatican.

Pope Clement VII used the Passetto in May 1527 during the Sack of Rome - the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's mutinous army of Spanish and German mercenaries attacked Rome; the Pope escaped from the Vatican to the Castel via the Passetto and held out there for over a month while the army looted the city. The Castel later became a prison; Benvenuto Cellini (the goldsmith and sculptor) was imprisoned here. Today it's a museum with the Roman-era spiral ramp, the papal apartments (including Pope Paul III's beautifully-frescoed rooms), the prison cells, and a roof terrace with a 360° Rome panorama. €15 entry. The Ponte Sant'Angelo in front of the Castle - originally Hadrian's funerary bridge from 134 AD - was given its current decoration in 1669 with ten angel statues designed by Bernini.

Borgo and Prati

The Borgo - the medieval neighbourhood between the Vatican and the river - was densely populated through the medieval and Renaissance periods, full of religious houses, hospitals for pilgrims and small shops catering to the visitor trade. In 1936 Mussolini ordered a broad new road - the Via della Conciliazione, named for the 1929 Lateran Treaty - cut through the medieval Borgo to give St Peter's a "proper" monumental approach. The demolitions destroyed several streets and significantly changed the approach to the basilica (architects had previously argued for keeping the surprise of emerging suddenly into St Peter's Square through a narrow medieval lane). The Borgo Pio and Borgo Vittorio streets running parallel to the Conciliazione survived; they are mostly tourist restaurants now.

Prati - the neighbourhood north and east of the Vatican, between Via Cola di Rienzo (south) and the Tiber (east) - was developed 1880s-1920s for the new Italian state's civil servants. The grid is rectilinear, the buildings late-19th-century apartment blocks with Liberty-style detail, the streets wide and tree-lined. The Mercato Trionfale food market (Via Andrea Doria, 270 stalls, daily mornings) anchors the food scene. Pizzarium - Gabriele Bonci's pizza-by-the-slice institution at Via della Meloria 43 - is a 10-min walk from the Vatican. Prati is the easiest neighbourhood for visitors who want to stay near the Vatican but in a real Roman residential setting; hotels here are €30-80/night cheaper than the Trevi quarter.