Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums are in Vatican City. It is a very small country inside the city of Rome, in Italy.

The museums are full of art. There are old stone statues and paintings. Some pictures are painted right onto the walls.

The Vatican Museums stand in Vatican City, inside Rome. They hold large collections of art, archaeology and ethno-anthropology (the study of peoples and their cultures), gathered by the popes over the centuries.

The museums call themselves 'the Museum of Museums'. Besides the collections, visitors walk through some of the most remarkable rooms of the popes' palace.

The museums' own history calls the Vatican 'the Museum of Museums': it houses the extensive collections of art, archaeology and ethno-anthropology gathered by the popes over the centuries, and also some of the most artistically significant rooms of the Apostolic Palace.

That history begins with the rooms themselves. Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) had Fra Angelico paint his private chapel, and Alexander VI (1492–1503) had Pinturicchio decorate his apartment, a cycle finished in 1494 and opened to the public only at the end of the 19th century.

One hall is 120 meters long. Its walls are covered with 40 giant painted maps of Italy.

Walking down it is like taking a tour of the whole country!

Pope Gregory XIII asked the mathematician and mapmaker Ignazio Danti, with a team of painters, to cover the walls of a long hall with 40 large maps of Italy. The Gallery of Maps opened in 1581.

It is 120 meters long and 6 meters wide. Its painted maps show the regions of Italy and islands such as Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.

Gregory XIII (1572–1585) commissioned the mathematician and cosmographer Ignazio Danti, with painters led by Girolamo Muziano, to document Italy's geography in 40 large maps covering the walls of a room near the Sistine Chapel. The Gallery of Maps opened in 1581; the museums call it a monumental lesson in mapmaking that joins scientific accuracy and art.

The hall is 120 m long and 6 m wide. Its frescoed maps show the regions of Italy, the major islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and smaller ones such as Elba, Malta and Corfu; the art historian Antonio Pinelli wrote that here the pope could take a walking tour of Italy without leaving the palace.

In the photo, a doorway is set into a very high brick wall.

Above it are the words MVSEI VATICANI. That means Vatican Museums. Big stone statues sit on top.

This photo, uploaded in August 2006, shows an entrance to the Vatican Museums set into the high brick wall of Vatican City. Carved letters over the arched doorway read 'MVSEI VATICANI', and a stone sculpture of two seated figures beside a crowned coat of arms sits on top.

Behind the wall rise other buildings, including a round, pale building with statues along its roofline, and a tall umbrella-shaped pine tree.

The photograph (uploaded 14 August 2006, titled 'Mura vaticane - ingresso ai Musei', the Vatican walls and the entrance to the Museums) looks up at a rusticated stone portal in the sloping brick wall, inscribed 'MVSEI VATICANI' and crowned by a sculpted group of two seated figures flanking a coat of arms.

Above the wall stand pale buildings, one of them round with arches and a row of statues on its cornice, and a tall pine. At the foot of the wall are railings, bollards linked by chains, a pedestrian-zone sign, a taxi sign and a restaurant's advertising board.