Vatican

Not far from the center of Rome lies the smallest country in the usual sense of the word — the Vatican.

To be fair, there are countries even smaller than the Vatican, but they are all “unusual.” Either they have no territory, or nobody recognizes them. The Vatican, on the other hand, has its own territory, passports, police, and even its own design on euro coins.

The Vatican hasn’t always been a dwarf state. Once it was the size of half of Italy. And it has been called the Vatican for less than a hundred years, even though it has existed for over a thousand.

The Papal Caliphate

It all began in 756, when Pepin the Short decided to show everyone who was boss, conquered a huge chunk of Italy, and then gave these lands to the pope. Along with Rome itself. Why? So that the pope would anoint Pepin and make his power divine. In short, he got played big time.

This gift went down in history as the “Donation of Pepin,” and the resulting country was named the “State of the Church.” But that’s in Italian. The French and the English called it the “Papal States,” and the Russians, the “Papal Region.”

America hadn’t been discovered yet, which is a pity: they could have called the country the “United States of Roman Priests.”

All in all, these Papal Emirates of Italy turned out to be an extremely shady affair. Almost immediately after the country was founded, the popes started fighting over power, killing each other, and seducing minors. One case is especially telling. It went down in history as the “Cadaver Synod.”

There was a pope named Formosus. And he had a successor, Boniface. The other priests bumped off this successor because he had supposedly been crowned the wrong way. And they decided to put Formosus himself on trial, so as to declare Boniface’s appointment illegal and choose a pope of their own.

But here was the problem: by that time, Formosus had been dead for nine months and was buried in a wooden box. Of course, such a trifle didn’t stop the priests. They ordered Formosus’s corpse dug up, dragged it into one of the main churches of Rome, dressed it in robes, sat it on a throne, and staged a real courtroom interrogation of the rotting body.

Naturally, the corpse couldn’t answer the questions by itself. So a deacon hid behind the throne and, imitating Formosus’s voice, answered the judges’ questions, cheerfully admitting his guilt and repenting of all his crimes.

The court declared Formosus and all his decrees illegitimate. His corpse was sentenced to have its fingers cut off, then it was dragged through all of Rome tied to a horse and thrown into the Tiber. Just like in Saint Petersburg.

The whole history of the Vatican is made up of episodes like this one. Throughout its history, the popes reveled in sleeping with prostitutes, corrupting minors, torturing people under the pretext of the “Holy Inquisition,” robbing, killing, covering up for criminals, and even selling the title of pope.

One period in the history of the Vatican was even called the “pornocracy.” For a full sixty years, power in the Vatican belonged to two prostitutes from an aristocratic family, who appointed their best lovers as popes.

Or take St. Bartholomew’s Day. One night in France, Catholics slaughtered ten thousand Protestants. Even Ivan the Terrible condemned the horrible massacre, but the pope of the time held a prayer service in honor of the mass murder and ordered one of the rooms in the Vatican Palace to be decorated with frescoes of the bloodbath.

To grasp the scale of the tragedy: in a single night, Catholics killed almost as many Christians as the Roman Empire did over centuries of persecution. So is it any surprise that Mother Teresa actually tormented people and laundered the Vatican’s money through her network of hospices?

Anyway, in this form the whole monstrous Papal Caliphate lasted all the way until 1870, when it was finally finished off by the new Kingdom of Italy, which united the entire Apennine Peninsula roughly within the borders of modern Italy.

The new authorities decided not to touch the pope: he was, after all, still the leader of the Catholics. After taking all of Rome, the Italian troops left a small piece of the city under the control of the Papal States. In protest, the priests and their sympathizers self-isolated in the Vatican fortress and stayed in quarantine for a whole 59 years.

The end of this e-pope-e came courtesy of none other than His Excellency the Duce of Fascism and Founder of the Empire, Benito Mussolini. In 1929, he struck a deal with the priests and recognized the fortress and the square next to it as an independent country. In exchange for the support of Catholics, of course. Talk about fighting fire with fire.

And only then did the name “Vatican” finally appear. Simply because the fortress stood on Vatican Hill.

The Vatican

Officially, the country is called “Vatican City State.” And yes, it is a classic city-state that has shrunk down to a palace-state.

The reader may also have heard the name “Holy See.” The thing is, the Vatican itself is just a territory that belongs to a certain Holy See. It is this See that is actually the state, while the Vatican is the territory it governs. Moreover, the existence of the Holy See has nothing to do with this territory. So if Russia suddenly annexed Vatican Hill, the Holy See would still go on existing... as a spherical virtual country in a vacuum.

If I understand correctly, there is nothing like this anywhere else in the world. It’s probably best to think of this scheme as a company, Holy See Incorporated, with the pope as its CEO and a lifelong lease on the Vatican as a retail space for extracting money from tourists.

Here they are, by the way. The lines in the Vatican start early in the morning, and until evening there’s no way to get around them or skip ahead.

The whole Vatican easily fits into a single frame from a helicopter. The colonnade around the square looks like the mandibles of an insect devouring tiny humans.

In the center of the square stands a huge obelisk that Emperor Caligula hauled over from Egypt.

Back then, in the time of the emperors, Vatican Hill was far outside Rome. There was no Vatican here, only a hippodrome. The obelisk stood in the middle of it.

St. Peter’s Basilica with its famous dome appeared here much later, and now the obelisk stands in the square in front of it.

The Vatican Underground

St. Peter’s Basilica is built on the tomb of St. Peter.

Peter was the first pope. He is the very same Apostle Peter, the disciple of Jesus Christ who supposedly stands at the gates of heaven and sorts the sinners. Peter is a historical figure. He really existed and was a preacher.

In the center of St. Peter’s Basilica, right under the dome, stands a huge baldachin — a ceremonial canopy over an altar or a throne.

The basilica is a multilayered matryoshka. Underneath it lies an older, earlier church, where the tombs of the popes are kept. Directly beneath the baldachin is the altar, and under it lies St. Peter.

This altar has never been a secret. But what lies beneath it?

In the middle of the 20th century, the Vatican let archaeologists in. They discovered that behind the altar there was a passage leading down into yet another underground level, the next layer of the matryoshka. After picking apart a brick wall, the archaeologists found a marble one behind it. It turned out to be an even older altar.

Marble isn’t so easy to pick apart. So the archaeologists found a narrow passage behind the side walls of the church and got into the next level of the vaults. There, along long corridors, stood large tombs that looked like houses. It turned out that an ancient Roman cemetery lay buried under the basilica, and the corridors had once been its streets.

Walking along these corridor-streets, the archaeologists went around the marble wall from the other side and reached the spot directly beneath the altar. What they saw was staggering: it was... a piece of a column set into brick. What did you expect, Tutankhamun’s treasures?

The column turned out to be part of an even older altar — this time the very first one, built right around St. Peter’s grave. The archaeologists reconstructed what this altar originally looked like. It was a roof on two columns, leaning against a red brick wall. They called it the “red wall,” and it was part of a street that once led to the grave.

That was the end of the matryoshka. The only problem was that there was no Peter in the grave. The only interesting thing was another wall propping up the red wall. It was covered all over in ancient Christian graffiti, so it was named exactly that: the “graffiti wall.”

The inscriptions on the wall were so old that they were impossible to read. The archaeologists invited an expert to decipher all this scribbling. The phrase they were hoping for, “Here lies Pete,” was nowhere to be found, but they did find a monogram of the Greek letters Chi and Rho — the first letters of the name Christ. The monogram itself was nothing special. Christians left thousands of such marks everywhere, from coins to sarcophagi.

But something odd about this monogram caught the archaeologists’ attention. The tip of the letter Rho seemed to be topped with a pattern that looked like either a key or the letter E.

The archaeologists figured out that in this monogram, the Greek Rho was actually the Latin letter P, and together with the E it formed the beginning of the name Peter. What’s more, the whole thing was shaped like a key. And Peter, of course, was the keeper of the keys of heaven!

The scientists realized that the truth was out there and began examining the graffiti wall. It turned out to be hollow. During the excavations, the wall had been accidentally broken through, and the hole had filled up with fragments of the red wall. As they cleared out the debris, the archaeologists examined every piece carefully. Finally, on a fragment of red brick, they found a barely visible inscription in Greek, ΠΕΤΡΟΣ ΕΝΙ: Peter is within.

After digging out the foundation of the graffiti wall, the archaeologists found a crawlspace leading down into a narrow chamber, neatly covered with a marble slab. Inside was a wooden box, which turned out to be a coffin with the remains of human bones.

Analysis showed that the bones belonged to a man aged 61, buried in the 1st century.

Of course, there was no name tag on the bones. But among them were pieces of rope dyed with a special red dye — Tyrian purple. This rare dye was extracted from sea snails, so it was worth its weight in gold. Ropes dyed with Tyrian purple could only have been made on the emperor’s orders.

Besides that, the remains included bones from almost every part of the body except one: there wasn’t a single bone from the feet.

The thing is, the ancient hippodrome that stood on Vatican Hill in the time of the emperors was used not only for races. People were also executed there.

According to tradition, St. Peter was executed by Emperor Nero, who blamed the Christians for setting Rome on fire. That explains the purple ropes. And Peter was executed by being crucified upside down. To hold the body in that position, a dozen nails had to be driven into his legs. When the body was taken down from the cross, it was impossible to pull the nails out. So the executioners simply cut off Peter’s feet and buried him that way.

So it turns out that the main Christian church stands right on top of a cemetery, churches all over the world keep the relics of saints, and on top of that we have stories like the Cadaver Synod.

But if you forget about all this necrophilia, the view of the Vatican from the top of the basilica is simply breathtaking!

On the other side of the basilica lie the Vatican Gardens.

The gardens have the pope’s villa, a college, a radio tower of their own, a helipad, and a railway station.

The gardens can only be visited on a separate, expensive tour. So “visiting the Vatican” usually means visiting St. Peter’s Basilica or the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistine Chapel

And getting into the Sistine Chapel isn’t that easy.

You can’t just walk in through the door. Ordinary tourists have to make their way through the labyrinth of the so-called “Vatican Museums.” In fact, it’s one big museum split into several sections that are cleverly intertwined. If you go through all of them in the right order, you end up in the Sistine Chapel. Although I’m sure the priests know a shortcut. Kind of like at IKEA.

The entrance to these museums is far to the right of St. Peter’s. This is where you find out that the Vatican is actually surrounded by a huge fortress wall rather than just standing in an open field.

A gate has been cut into this fortress wall, with an inscription above it: Musei Vaticani.

Almost every museum is named after the pope who founded it. For example, the Pio Museum and the Chiaramonti Museum — these are all names of popes.

Each museum has its own collection. Here it’s Italian paintings, there it’s Egyptian mummies, and somewhere else it’s Greek vases.

Rome itself started collecting goods from all over the world when it plundered Jerusalem and carried off the golden menorah and tons of treasure. Then Rome passed the baton of plunder on to the Papal States.

During the Crusades, in the Age of Discovery, in modern times — throughout their entire history, the popes dragged junk from all over the world into their mansions. Honestly, if Yugoslavia had been making dressing tables back in the days of the popes, they would have opened a separate dressing table museum.

Keep in mind that everything on public display was acquired more or less honestly.

All the juicy stuff is hidden in the depths of the Vatican. They say its archives stretch for 80 kilometers. They hold an incredible number of books, treasures, religious objects, and works of art.

Gold and silver taken from the Incas and Aztecs were used to decorate the Vatican palaces. Greek statues removed from the Parthenon were recently returned to Greece. Mexico is trying to persuade the Vatican to give back ancient manuscripts. Egypt gave up hope of ever seeing its ancient statues and sarcophagi again long ago.

The most impressive museum is the Gallery of Maps. A 120-meter corridor is covered with maps of all the popes’ possessions, and the ceilings with biblical scenes.

The Gallery of Maps leads straight to the Sistine Chapel. It’s simply one of the museums, and it is likewise named after a pope — Sixtus. In essence, it’s a piece of a church.

People go to the Sistine Chapel for exactly one exhibit. Here on the ceiling is Michelangelo’s most famous work, The Creation of Adam.

Taking photos in the chapel is strictly forbidden. But I couldn’t resist. The thing is, everyone is sure that this painting covers the whole ceiling. It turns out it’s just one of many frescoes!

So this is the great beauty among which the popes live... But the story about Italy doesn’t end here. The thing is, although the smallest country in the world is located in Rome... that country is not the Vatican.