Discover the history of the Vatican City

Although the Vatican is recognized as a sovereign state only since the signing of the Lateran agreements on February 11, 1929, its history dates back to Roman antiquity .
Vatican: more than 1,300 years of collections, more than 2,000 years of existence.
In fact, the history of the Vatican began when the Vatican hill ( ager vaticanus ) was the retreat of the Roman nobles; Agrippina, mother of Caligula and grandmother of Nero, built some villas there.
The emperor Caligula later built the circus vaticanus . The obelisk in the Plaza de San Pedro is one of the only remains that is still preserved.
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the late Middle Ages, the Vatican hill began to become the residence of the popes.
In the 5th century, Pope Simaco was the first to build a palace.
Throughout the feudal period, successive popes received numerous donations from kings and princes, allowing them to accumulate a colossal fortune.
The Pope thus became one of the most important landowners in Europe and reigned over the Papal States: they used to say that it was the “patrimony of Saint Peter”, which served as the authority to establish the power of the Church in the Vatican.
During the Italian Renaissance, the popes acted as true patrons: fortified by their wealth, they accumulated a huge collection of works of art, although the power of the Pope was called into question due to the advancement of humanistic ideas.
The progress of rationality, individualism, the wars of religion, political and social crises and the disputes of the great families (Medici, Orsini, Borgia, Colonna) contributed to a decline in the power of the Pope in Europe.
Paradoxically, in the 16th century, during the Renaissance, the great monuments of the Vatican were built:
The Sistine Chapel
St Peter’s basilica

The courtyard of the Belvedere Palace: Discover the history of the Vatican City

The invasion of Lazio by Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops in 1798 put the Vatican under French rule.
Restored in the fall of the French Empire in 1815, the Papal States disappeared in 1870 under the effect of the unification of the Italian State: the Pope was sent to the Vatican Palace.
While Rome was declared the capital of Italy. The Pope no longer had the political power of yesteryear, a dispute was established between Italy and the papacy: the so-called Roman Question .
This matter was resolved on February 11, 1929 with the recognition of the Vatican as a sovereign city-state, ruled by the Pope, which had once again recovered its political and spiritual power in the territory of the Vatican.