Page 20 - Expotime10_11_2017

Museums of the Mediterranean Museums of the Mediterranean

Utz Anhalt

The Vatican Museums: the outmoded paradox

The Vatican owns one of the largest collections of arts The Lateran Pacts between Italy and the Pope founded
and historical items in the world, amassed by popes over the Vatican state in 1929. Since then, the Vatican is an
the centuries and visited by 25 million people a year. The independent state within the city of Rome at the right
Vatican museums include treasures of the pre-Christian bank of the Tiber, extending to the Montes Vaticani.
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Rome, Greece, Egypt, artwork from the Christian world,
works by Leonardo da Vinci, objects from all around the Vatican City stretches over 44 ha and the Vatican Mu-
world and modern religious art. Monumental works of seums take up much of this space. Five entrances lead
art are part of the museums itself: the Chapel of Beato into the Vatican state, guarded by Swiss Guards and the
Angelico, the Borgia Apartments or the Raphael Rooms. Vatican City state Police. The entrance to the Museums
is located at Viale Vaticano near the Piazza del Risorg-
The Vatican area imento.
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In the antiquity, today’s “Vatican” defined the malarial The museum complex
swampy area on the right bank of the river Tiber which ex-
tended from the Milvio Bridge to the Sixtus Bridge. In the During the first centuries, the popes hoarded treasures
Roman Republic, this area was named Ager Vaticanus with from the Late Antiquity to the present in their private
the mouth of the Cremera as northern and the Janiculum rooms. This museum idea was developed since the early
as southern border. In the first centuries AD, Vaticanum 16th cent. In 1506, Pope Julius II bought the famous marble
referred to the region of the present Vatican state. sculpture of the Laocoon group from a winegrower who
had detected it in his vineyard, near to the former Golden
The area became a holy site for Christians because St House of Nero. Much later, Benedict XIV, pope between
Peter was said to be buried in a necropolis at the Montes 1740-1758, founded the Museum Christianum, and Pope
Vaticani. In 326 AD, the Christian emperor Constantine Pius IX opened the Lateran Museum in 1854. The Vatican
gave the order to build a basilica over St Peter’s burial celebrated the 500th anniversary of its museums in Octo-
site, and in the 16th and 17th cent., the spot was super- ber 2006 (apparently a wrong anniversary) and opened the
shaped by the recent St Peter‘s Basilica. archaeological site of a necropolis to the public.

The Vatican Mu-
20 seums seen from
EXPOTIME!, issue October / November 2017 St Peter’s.
Source: Wikime-
dia Commons /
F. Bucher