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When staying in one of our Vatican Apartments near Vatican city, these food stores are in walking distance of your apartment. Not in the mood for home-cooking? We have selected some excellent restaurants to enjoy lunch or dinner.
Vatican City Area Food Stores:
Vatican City Restaurant Tips:
The Vatican City is a small independent State within the city of Rome, founded in 1929 after the Lateran Treaty, a political agreement made between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See which could guarantee a total independency from the rest of the country. The long street conducing to the Holy See, Via della Conciliazione, was commissioned by Mussolini and symbolizes the conciliation between Italy and the Vatican signed in the Palazzo Laterano, a palace adjacent to the church of San Giovanni (see area description). The Bishop of Rome, the Pope, is the head of the ecclesiastical-monarchical State and resides in the Holy See, the Santa Sede in Italian, in Saint Peters’s Square (Piazza San Pietro).
The name Vatican derives from the area where this place was founded: a mount situated on the western bank of the Tiber river, included in tt e walls of Rome under Pope Leone IV in order to protect Saint Peter’s Basilica, the centre of Roman Catholicism. The State within the walls comprehends the Apostolic Palace, the Palace of the Vatican Govern, the Vatican Museums and the Vatican Gardens.
The Vatican State does not only represent a sacred site but also an amazing concentration of arts: sculptures, paintings and, of course, the astonishing, extraordinary architectures. Bramante, Bernini and Michelangelo are the greatest names among the many architects that have made this place special, reverential and captivating, underlining its holiness. A complex of more than a thousand apartments form the Vatican Palaces only, an inestimable treasure of architecture including the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Vatican Library, which preserves a numberless quantity of ancient manuscripts, books and documents.
The first monumental construction forming the Vatican State that you will see when approaching the Conciliation Street (Via della Conciliazione) is Saint Peter’s Basilica, with its wide square. The church was founded in 1506 and completed in 1629, on the same site where the former Byzantine Basilica constructed under Constantine I Empire was erected (IV century). The Catholic tradition holds that Saint Peter was buried in the same place where the Basilica lies, hence the name of the church, in honor to the apostle, first Pope in history. The first projects were all created in respect to the original shape of the majestic Byzantine basilica , with the exception of Bramante’s project which considered the demolition of the former presbytery in order to obtain a Greek cross shape plant with a solemn cupola towering above the centre. Michelangelo later kept this project adding a facade (like the Pantheon’s pronao) but the original Latin cross shape was brought back by architect Carlo Maderno, who also created the Baroque facade of the basilica, with the Holy Door opened only during important religious celebrations. The basilica houses three masterpieces: the bronze statue of Saint Peter, the world famous Pietà statue made by Michelangelo and Bernini’s Truth, along with the many other other monuments and Papal tombs. Saint Peter’s square was designed by Bernini, framed by a beautiful colonnade defining its oval shape opening from the end of the modern Via della Conciliazione.
The Vatican Gardens extend over 23 hectares of ground, hosting many monuments from middle age to modern era, fountains and sculpture immersed in a wide green space facing the Apostolic Palace (or Vatican Palaces) where the Pope resides.
The greatest museum in the World is the Vatican Museum, founded in the XVI century and intended to host sculptures and paintings from all over the globe and divided in several areas (“sale” o “gallerie”) named after the works they house or their structures, such as the Greek Cross Gallery, so called due to its architectonical plant, or the Gallery of Busts, displaying ancient greek and roman busts. The queue of tourists is always impressively long, so a lot of patience is required when visiting the museum. The wait may take even more than four or five hours! But the effort will be worth when entering the Sistine Chapel, covered in frescoes painted mainly by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512. One masterpiece dominates the ceiling of the chapel and it’s the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo’s most famous painting brought to its original colors after a restoration made in 1994. The Last Judgement is also impressive, dominating the whole wall behind the altar.
A city worth while exploring from one of our Vatican apartments!
When staying in one of our Vatican Apartments you can just walk and experience all these Vatican city must sees!