The Vatican

St. Peter's Basilica

Vatican City State is an independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy. Established with the Lateran Treaty (1929), it is distinct from, yet under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See (Latin: Sancta Sedes). With an area of 49 hectares (120 acres) and a population of about 825, it is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population. The Vatican City is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state ruled by the pope who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church. The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various national origins. Since the return of the popes from Avignon in 1377, they have generally resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere. The Holy See dates back to early Christianity, and is the primate episcopal see of the Catholic Church, with 1.3 billion Catholic Christians around the world distributed in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. The independent Vatican City-state, on the other hand, came into existence on 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation, not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy. Within the Vatican City are religious and cultural sites such as St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museums. They feature some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. The unique economy of Vatican City is supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and souvenirs, fees for admission to museums, and sales of publications.

Flag of Vatican City

The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.

The name Vatican City was first used in the Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, which established the modern city-state named after Vatican Hill, the geographic location of the state. "Vatican" is derived from the name of an Etruscan settlement, Vatica or Vaticum located in the general area the Romans called Ager Vaticanus, "Vatican territory". The official Italian name of the city is Città del Vaticano or, more formally, Stato della Città del Vaticano, meaning "Vatican City State". Although the Holy See (which is distinct from the Vatican City) and the Catholic Church use Ecclesiastical Latin in official documents, the Vatican City uses Italian.[citation needed] The Latin name is Status Civitatis Vaticanae; this is used in official documents by the Holy See, the Church and the Pope.

St. Peter's Square is a large plaza located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, the papal enclave inside Rome, directly west of the neighbourhood or rione of Borgo. Both the square and the basilica are named after Saint Peter, an apostle of Jesus considered by Catholics to be the first Pope. At the centre of the square is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, erected at the current site in 1586. Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the square almost 100 years later, including the massive Doric colonnades, four columns deep, which embrace visitors in "the maternal arms of Mother Church". A granite fountain constructed by Bernini in 1675 matches another fountain designed by Carlo Maderno in 1613.

The open space which lies before the basilica was redesigned by Gian Lorenzo Bernini from 1656 to 1667, under the direction of Pope Alexander VII, as an appropriate forecourt, designed "so that the greatest number of people could see the Pope give his blessing, either from the middle of the façade of the church or from a window in the Vatican Palace" (Norwich 1975 p 175). Bernini had been working on the interior of St. Peter's for decades; now he gave order to the space with his renowned colonnades, using a simplified Doric order, to avoid competing with the palace-like façade by Carlo Maderno, but he employed it on an unprecedented colossal scale to suit the space and evoke a sense of awe.

View of Rome from the Dome of St. Peter's Basilica, June 2007

St. Peter's Square obelisk

Originally raised in the Forum Iulium in Alexandriamap by the prefect Cornelius Gallus on Augustus' orders around 30–28 BC. No hieroglyphs. Brought to Rome by Caligula in 40 for the spina of the Vatican Circus. Relocated by Pope Sixtus V in 1586 using a method devised by Domenico Fontana; the first monumental obelisk raised in the modern period, it is the only obelisk in Rome that has not toppled since Roman times. During the Middle Ages, the gilt ball on top of the obelisk was believed to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar. Fontana later removed the ancient metal ball, now in a Rome museum, that stood atop the obelisk and found only dust. Pedro Tafur in his Andanças (circa 1440) mentions that many passed between the ground and the "tower" base "thinking it a saintly thing".

St. Peter's Square and Basilica, 1909

St. Peter's Square colonnades

A reconstruction of the Old Basilica of St Peters in 1450; at left is the obelisk

St. Peter's Square (facing St. Peter's Basilica), and the obelisk from the Circus of Nero

Coat of arms of the Holy See with gold key in bend as described in Donald Lindsay Galbreath, A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Heraldry (W. Heffer and Sons, 1930), p. 9; Bruno Bernhard Heim, Heraldry in the Catholic Church: Its Origin, Customs and Laws

detail of basilica roof looking toward square.

Vatican Hill is a hill located across the Tiber river from the traditional seven hills of Rome, that also gave the name of Vatican City. It is the location of St. Peter's Basilica.

Vatican Hill (top left corner) in The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1519), from the Acts of the Apostles tapestry series by the Flemish workshop of Pieter van Endigen Aelst, based on Raphael

Detail of Vatican Hill

OLD SAINT PETERS

Old St. Peter's Basilica was the building that stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where the new St. Peter's Basilica stands today in Vatican City. Construction of the basilica, built over the historical site of the Circus of Nero, began during the reign of Emperor Constantine I. The name "old St. Peter's Basilica" has been used since the construction of the current basilica to distinguish the two buildings.

Construction began by orders of the Roman Emperor Constantine I between 318 and 322, and took about 40 years to complete. Over the next twelve centuries, the church gradually gained importance, eventually becoming a major place of pilgrimage in Rome.

Fresco showing cutaway view of Constantine's St. Peter's Basilica as it looked in the 4th centur

A map, circa 1590, by Tiberio Alfarano of the interior of Old Saint Peter's, noting the locations of the original chapels and tombs

Fontana della Pigna (1st century AD) which stood in the courtyard of the Old St. Peter's Basilica during the Middle Ages and then moved again, in 1608, to a vast niche in the wall of the Vatican facing the Cortile della Pigna, located in Vatican City, in Rome, Italy

Bronze statue of Saint Peter by Arnolfo di Cambio, dating to the 13th century

The great Navicella mosaic (1305–1313) in the atrium is attributed to Giotto di Bondone. The giant mosaic, commissioned by Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi, occupied the whole wall above the entrance arcade facing the courtyard. It depicted St. Peter walking on the waters. This extraordinary work was mainly destroyed during the construction of the new St. Peter's in the 16th century, but fragments were preserved. Navicella means "little ship" referring to the large boat which dominated the scene, and whose sail, filled by the storm, loomed over the horizon. Such a natural representation of a seascape was known only from ancient works of art.

The nave ended with an arch, which held a mosaic of Constantine and Saint Peter, who presented a model of the church to Christ. On the walls, each having 11 windows, were frescoes of various people and scenes from both the Old and New Testament. According to combined statements by Ghiberti and Vasari, Giotto painted five frescoes of the life of Christ and various other panels, some of which Vasari said were "either destroyed or carried away from the old structure of St. Peter's during the building of the new walls."

Navicella mosaic - Fragment in Boville Ernica

The fragment of an eighth-century mosaic, the Epiphany, is one of the very rare remaining bits of the medieval decoration of Old St. Peter's Basilica. The precious fragment is kept in the sacristy of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. It proves the high artistic quality of the destroyed mosaics. Another one, a standing madonna, is on a side altar in the Basilica of San Marco in Florence.

Mater misericordiae, today in San Marco in Florence

Mosaic, today in the Museo Barracco

Two pairs of the original Solomonic columns now support curved pediments to form trompe-l'œil porticoes on the piers of St. Peter's.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/402852 Artist: Nicolas Beatrizet, French, Lun?ville 1515?ca. 1566 Rome (?), Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae: Grotesque Winding Column in St. Peter's, 16th century, Engraving, sheet: 16 3/8 x 4 1/8 in. (41.6 x 10.4 cm)..mount: 16 3/4 x 4 5/16 in. (42.5 x 11 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, Transferred from the Library, 1941 (41.72(1.108))

A sketch by Giacomo Grimaldi of the interior of St. Peter's during its reconstruction, showing the temporary placement of some of the tombs.

The Stefaneschi Altarpiece is a triptych by the Italian medieval painter Giotto, commissioned by Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi to serve as an altarpiece for one of the altars of Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

It is a rare example in Giotto's work of a documented commission, and includes Giotto's signature, although the date, like most dates for Giotto, is disputed, and many scholars feel the artist's workshop was responsible for its execution. It had long been thought to have been made for the main altar of the church; more recent research suggests that it was placed on the "canon's altar", located in the nave, just to the left of the huge arched opening into the transept. It is now at the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome.

Back side. Tempera on wood. cm 178 × 89 (central panel); cm 168 × 83 c. (side panels); cm 45 c. × 83 c. (each section of the predella)

Saint Peter's tomb is a site under St. Peter's Basilica that includes several graves and a structure said by Vatican authorities to have been built to memorialize the location of Saint Peter's grave. St. Peter's tomb is near the west end of a complex of mausoleums that date between about AD 130 and AD 300. The complex was partially torn down and filled with earth to provide a foundation for the building of the first St. Peter's Basilica during the reign of Constantine I in about AD 330. Though many bones have been found at the site of the 2nd-century shrine, as the result of two campaigns of archaeological excavation, Pope Pius XII stated in December 1950 that none could be confirmed to be Saint Peter's with absolute certainty. Following the discovery of bones that had been transferred from a second tomb under the monument, on June 26, 1968, Pope Paul VI said that the relics of Saint Peter had been identified in a manner considered convincing. The grave lies at the foot of the aedicula beneath the floor. The remains of four individuals and several farm animals were found in this grave. In 1953, after the initial archeological efforts had been completed, another set of bones were found that were said to have been removed without the archeologists' knowledge from a niche (loculus) in the north side of a wall (the graffiti wall) that abuts the red wall on the right of the aedicula. Subsequent testing indicated that these were the bones of a 60- to 70-year-old man. Margherita Guarducci argued that these were the remains of Saint Peter and that they had been moved into a niche in the graffiti wall from the grave under the aedicula "at the time of Constantine, after the peace of the church" (313). Antonio Ferrua, the archaeologist who headed the excavation that uncovered what is known as Saint Peter's Tomb, said that he wasn't convinced that the bones that were found were those of Saint Peter. The upper image shows the area of the lower floor of St. Peter's Basilica that lies above the site of Saint Peter's tomb. A portion of the aedicula that was part of Peter's tomb rose above level of this floor and was made into the Niche of the Pallium which can be seen in the center of the image.

St. Peter's baldachin, by Bernini, in the modern St. Peter's Basilica. Saint Peter's tomb lies directly below this structure.

Very little is known about the burial of Peter's immediate successors, prior to the period when popes are known with relative certainty to have been buried in the various Catacombs of Rome. Burial near Peter, on Vatican Hill, is attributed to: Pope Linus, Pope Anacletus, Pope Evaristus, Pope Telesphorus, Pope Hyginus, Pope Pius I, Pope Anicetus (later transferred to the Catacomb of Callixtus), Pope Victor I. Epigraphic evidence exists only for Linus, with the discovery of a burial slab marked "Linus" in 1615; however, the slab is broken such that it could have once read "Aquilinius" or "Anullinus". With three exceptions, each pope before Anicetus, the first pope known to have been entombed in the Catacombs, is traditionally regarded as having been buried near Peter. A notable exception is Pope Clement I, who was traditionally regarded as having been martyred in the Black Sea near Crimea. Similarly, the original tombs of Pope Alexander I and Pope Sixtus I are unknown, although there are several churches positing mutually contradictory claims of translation.