Vatican City – The secrets of the Catholic Church’s seat of power | DW Documentary

Vatican City – The secrets of the Catholic Church’s seat of power | DW Documentary

As nations go, the Vatican is tiny. But on the stage of world history, it’s a giant. The magnificent buildings of Vatican City were built around the humble tomb of St. Peter. Even the first basilica on the site was almost as large as Notre Dame in Paris.

The structure was over 120 meters long and 66 meters wide. Its dimensions were colossal. And the successor to the first basilica is even more impressive. St. Peter’s Basilica was intended to be the largest church in the world. Covering over 20 thousand square meters the size of three soccer fields

It can hold 60 thousand worshipers. Both in size, but also in its aesthetic qualities, it needed to be grandiose in order to impress its visitors. Building a church of this size presented enormous technical challenges. Not least of which was how to build a 42-meter diameter dome 110 meters above the ground.

Iron rings were incorporated into the dome. The large amount of iron made it a very modern structure. In the middle of St. Peter’s Square stands an obelisk weighing over 300 tons. To raise it, a wooden structure was built that served as both a crane and a means of transporting it.

About 900 men, 144 horses and 40 winches. In Vatican City, architecture is entirely at the service of the Church. A secret 800-meter-long passageway was reserved for the Pope’s exclusive use. And documents from the early days of Christianity are stored in an underground bunker. There are 80 kilometers of shelves!

Behind these architectural wonders lie an unimaginable number of technical challenges. Michelangelo not only painted the Sistine Chapel, but also devised the necessary scaffolding himself. And Bernini conceived a highly original design for St. Peter’s Square. About 300,000 people can fit into the piazza.

The Vatican allows us to see what is normally closed to prying eyes, and 3D animation immerses us in the city’s amazing architecture. Join us as we bring the secrets of the Holy City to light. The Vatican lies in the heart of Italy, nestled in the city of Rome.

It is less than half a square kilometer in area, a third of which is made up of gardens and parks. Excluding a few plots of land outside the city proper, the Vatican is only a fifth the size of Monaco. The pontiff stands at the head of the small nation,

Protected by 135 Swiss Guards. The Vatican may be a micro-nation, but it is the spiritual guiding light for 1.3 billion Christians across the world. If you think about it, 2000 years ago there was nothing on the Vatican hill. To understand how a city-state with enormous symbolic power

Was created from nothing or almost nothing we have to start at St. Peter’s Basilica. More than 20,000 visitors descend on the cathedral every day to admire the architectural masterpiece … the lavish décor and the Christian imagery. But the origins of St. Peter’s Basilica lie beneath its marble floors,

At the exact spot where the famous 28-meter-high bronze canopy stands. If you were to dig down 10 meters, you would discover that a necropolis lay here before the cathedral was built. The necropolis was laid out along a small road. These burial sites were located here on the hill.

They were placed on the outskirts of the city because the ancient Romans divided the living from the dead. The city was the realm of the living and the dead lived outside it. At that time, this graveyard was actually outside the city of Rome. It is well preserved and still contains tombs,

Some of which are over 2,000 years old. And near this necropolis is another building that played an important role for the Vatican. Down the hill from the cemetery, Emperor Caligula had a Roman arena built. Caligula built a venue that he then left to his successors, including Nero,

Which is why it is also known as the “Circus of Caligula and Nero”. The Circus was 500 meters long, 100 meters wide and could hold up to 20,000 spectators. It was the site of a pivotal event in the story of Christianity at the foot of this obelisk, in the year 64 AD.

After the great fire of Rome in 64 A.D., Emperor Nero decided to blame the Christians and to set up a makeshift spot of execution in this circus. He executed St. Peter, crucified upside down, and his friends were given the body of a 70-year-old dead man, which they had to bury quickly,

And they buried him in a hole in the ground. This simple hole in the middle of the necropolis became a pilgrimage shrine for Christians from all over the world. Emperor Constantine, 250 years later, was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He had a church built there,

Laying the foundation for what later became St. Peter’s Basilica. The church that we know today as St. John Lateran was the first church that he built. And that was followed by a series of other churches dedicated to St. Peter, to St. Paul, to St. Lawrence, etc.

The basilica that Constantine built for St. Peter was probably the most complex project, because the one requisite was that the tomb of St. Peter stay where it was and become the central space of the church. This was an effort to preserve the exact spot of Peter’s tomb, which was really beyond the ordinary.

This unusual project began with dismantling the Circus of Caligula and Nero. Only the obelisk in the middle remained. After the stones were removed, the slope of the hillside on which the basilica was to be built had to be leveled off. In order to do this, since Peter’s tomb was on a hillside,

The engineers had to lop off the top of the hill, in order to create a flat plateau. The uphill slope had to be excavated and the soil used to infill the slope downhill of the tomb. It was stabilized with a 7-meter-high retaining wall. This formed the surface on which the largest Christian Basilica

Of the time could be built. The structure was over 120 meters long and 66 meters wide. The transept was 90 meters across. Another 60 or 70 meters were added in front of the basilica for the atrium. Its dimensions were colossal. There were 88 columns made of expensive marble.

Getting the marble blocks from the imperial quarries to Rome required complex logistical planning. In the late Middle Ages, when the basilica was almost a thousand years old, it needed renovation. And numerous alterations had greatly changed its appearance. You had a building with many sections added to it, unclear,

And maybe even unfit for religious ceremonies that were taking place there. Should the original basilica be renovated and further altered, or simply demolished? The Church chose the second option and planned an even more colossal building. They wanted something that would reflect the new power and prestige of the Renaissance papacy.

In size, but also in its form, in its aesthetic qualities, it needed to be grandiose. The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica is a symbol of this grandeur. From below it looks as if it was built with consummate ease. But the reality was quite different.

Constructing the dome and the rest of the cathedral was an adventure, to say the least. There are many drawings by all the architects that had been involved in the project: Bramante, Michelangelo, della Porta, Maderno. But how to connect all these drawings and understand who was doing what, and what leads to what?

That is a very difficult puzzle to solve. The first pieces of the puzzle include an extraordinary pope, Julius the Second, and a star of Italian architecture, Donato Bramante. Together they began the St. Peter’s Basilica project. The layout does not resemble a Latin cross, as churches usually do,

But takes the form of a Greek cross with a central dome, 4 smaller neighboring domes and 4 towers. Bramante designed a Greek cross project, which agrees with Renaissance ideas of the ideal building and with spiritual ideas, God being in the center of the universe. This was an innovative project.

Nothing like it had ever been done before, and so it required huge financial and material investment. It had the Pope’s full and generous support. Bramante modeled his dome on that of the Pantheon, built in ancient times and only 2 kilometers from the Vatican. The nearly 2000-year-old building has survived because the architects

Of the time had mastered the use of concrete. Bramante adopted the shape of the Pantheon dome but raised the dome of St. Peter’s by several dozen meters. St. Peter’s is a grandiose cathedral with a central floor plan. The gigantic dome rests on four pillars with four large arches.

It was technically difficult to build, as the structure not only had to be erected, but also had to last for a long time. It had to be able to support its own weight as well as withstand earthquakes, storms and other unforeseen events over the course of time.

Work began on the new St. Peter’s Basilica in 1506 and remained a one-of-a-kind construction site for almost 120 years. This was certainly the largest construction site in the world at the time. To construct such a building, you not only need bricks, lime, stone, travertine and marble,

But also materials such as iron, lead and tin. Of course, this is also true for other cathedrals, but especially for St. Peter’s, because it is so big. So its construction not only touched what is now the Lazio region, but practically the whole of Europe.

Although vast sums of funding were raised, work progressed slowly. Pope Julius the Second died in 1513 and Donato Bramante followed a year later. By then, the structural core of St. Peter’s had been completed, including the 4 columns and their connecting arches. But construction of the dome had not even begun,

And it was not clear if it could be built at all. The successors of Julius the Second and Donato Bramante now had to contend with the half-finished shell. If you think about the number of popes and the number of architects, it is a very long-winded project,

Much longer than any other project that any other pope undertook. The future of St. Peter’s remained uncertain for 40 years. It was as if the project was cursed. Architect after architect brought only sluggish progress. One of these, Raphael, planned to transform the layout into a Latin cross with a classical nave.

When he died at 37, his plans died with him. Raphael’s successor, Antonio da Sangallo, pondered a wooden model for 8 years without laying a single stone. The first architect to bring momentum back to the project, despite his advanced years, was Michelangelo. Almost out of desperation, Pope Paul the Third

Summoned Michelangelo Buonarroti in November 1546 because all the other great masters had died. Pope Paul the Third forced Michelangelo to become the architect of St. Peter’s. He was 72 years old by this point. Absolutely incredible. Could the old master still achieve a stroke of genius at 72?

Would he live long enough to leave his mark on the building? And how would he go about building the huge dome? These questions remained unanswered for the time being. Like Bramante, he wanted to build a hemispherical dome. Michelangelo admired the Pantheon. He said that it was built by angels and not by men.

These are the most difficult domes to build, because the nature of the hemisphere wants to implode. Michelangelo again took up Bramante’s original idea of a basilica with a central dome. Partly because perfect symmetry represented purity, and partly for reasons of cost. He couldn’t just think of something completely out of the blue.

He had to work with what was already standing because it would have been far too expensive to tear down everything and then build something new. But Michelangelo wanted to set an example as an artist and master builder. His dome was to be the largest ever built. Michelangelo designed a revolutionary dome.

It is basically a double dome, two domes that sit on top of each other but hardly touch. They are separate from each other. The inner dome bears the weight. Its walls are barely one meter thick. The dome is 42 meters in diameter, so this was very daring. The idea behind Michelangelo’s double dome

Is that they bear the load together and reinforce each other, because they are connected at the edge and the lantern. The dome rests on a ring-shaped tambour, or drum, which is clad with 15-meter-high double columns at the top. Michelangelo didn’t live to see the dome built.

What he did manage to finish was the drum. The basilica looked very strange when he died. And his building successor inherited a tambour without a dome. Who would finally achieve the seemingly impossible task of building the dome? Michelangelo’s successor, the third cathedral architect,

Was Giacomo della Porta and when he showed the Pope his design, he knew exactly what sort of challenges awaited him. Sixtus the Fifth had a look at it and said, “Well, della Porta, how long is this going to take?” Now, bear in mind it took Michelangelo 17 years to build the drum.

So, della Porta said, “10 years,” which was a massive underestimate to build this enormous dome, twice the height of the Pantheon. And Sixtus said, “You have two years to complete it.” To erect the dome within such a short time frame, della Porta altered Michelangelo’s design. He replaced the hemisphere with a peaked arch,

Raising the dome another 7 meters. He retained the idea of the double domes, but his shells were thicker and, thanks to internal ribs, much more stable. These ribs better distribute the weight to the load-bearing surface of the drum below. The second advantage is that the ribs connect the two shells

So that they move together if the foundation settles a little or in an earthquake. So they are much stronger and more stable. Della Porta also had metal reinforcements built into the dome structure. There are three metal rings in the dome and four more in the lantern.

It is further reinforced by chains, iron plates and metal rods. The large amount of iron made it a very modern structure. The iron plays an especially important role for the lantern. At 110 meters above the ground, it is completely exposed to the wind and so tends to vibrate.

So it had to flex as much as possible. That was his technical stroke of genius. That made it possible to build a dome even higher than Michelangelo had planned. And this was also achieved by his workers on-site, building 24/7 around the clock. Della Porta finished this dome in 22 months.

So just under Sixtus the Fifth’s two-year time limit. In 1603, 12 years after the construction of the main dome, the new chief architect Carlo Maderno had the old basilica demolished. The nave was built in its place, making St. Peter’s Basilica the largest church in the world.

But the façade was massive and blocked the view of the dome from St. Peter’s Square. From a functional point of view, everything was perfect. But Michelangelo’s design had been disfigured. You could no longer see the dome, especially the tambour, which was a key element of the dome. Maderno chose this type of façade

Because it resembled a palace façade and gave the impression that there was an institution within. Architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini was given the task of reducing the façade’s massive appearance and bringing the dome back to the fore. On paper, the solution seemed relatively simple. But for Bernini, it turned into a nightmare.

Bernini was commissioned to build 2 towers on the façade that had been erected by Maderno. But because the lands on which that part of the structure are standing are quite marshy, the foundations were not enough to support these towers. So when he started to build these towers,

Very quickly cracks appeared in the façade of St. Peter’s, that made clear that, technically, this was not possible. Despite this setback, Bernini would ultimately leave a deep impression. It was he who designed the basilica’s interior, from the canopy over St. Peter’s tomb

To the adornment of the dome’s 4 pillars and the church flooring. A few years later, he was entrusted with a task that would also shape the architecture of the Vatican: He was commissioned to design St. Peter’s Square. In whatever shape it was going to take,

The primary specification was to do with as many people as possible being able to see the benediction loggia on the façade. Bernini had to contend with a 25-meter-tall obelisk. This monolith, weighing over 300 tons, was still standing where it had been in the old Circus.

But in future it was to mark the middle of the square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. We estimate that about 300,000 people can fit into the piazza. This is an extraordinary, mind-boggling amount of people which tells you something about the scale of the structure.

Bernini wanted to place the monolith in the middle of the future square because St. Peter had died at its foot and because Pope Sixtus the Fifth had erected obelisks all over Rome. As symbols of power, but also as landmarks for pilgrims.

Sixtus the Fifth is the pope that re-erected almost all of the obelisks that you see standing in Rome today. He took on-board what the ancient Roman emperors did, symbols of power over the world. He put them in strategic locations that would help pilgrims navigate through the city.

Moving a more than 300-ton obelisk was a risky endeavor. The brittle granite could break if it was dragged to another place. So, the Pope announced a competition for ideas. There was a European-wide competition, and probably something around 500 submissions were sent to the pope trying to come up with various solutions.

One of the suggestions that came in was “Pray.” The Italian Domenico Fontana won the competition. The architect came up not with a prayer, but an astonishing machine. The main construction was called the castello. This was a monumental wooden framework that functioned as various areas of support for the ropes and the winches,

As a crane to lift it up but also to protect it as it was being lowered down. To protect the granite as much as possible, the obelisk was first clad with timber. The castello, Italian for castle, then raised the monument. Next, the monolith was placed on a ramp resting on tree trunks.

This ramp on rollers had drawbars on which people and horses pulled together. This allowed the entire structure, including the obelisk, to be moved. What he used is 900 men, 144 horses and 40 winches using 2-feet-thick hemp rope to re-erect the obelisk.

It took 37 days to cover the almost 300 meters to the new location. Despite the crowds of people watching, the operation took place in complete silence, because the Pope had threatened anyone disturbing the work with death. When the obelisk was finally ready to be raised, disaster almost struck.

It came to this very dramatic moment where the obelisk was at this angle. The ropes had heated up and become slack. It really looked like it was going to end in disaster. And then a sailor, who obviously was going to know about ropes, cried out from the crowd, “Water on the ropes!”

And Domenico Fontana immediately realized that, by putting water on those hot ropes, they would contract. And that is what happened. Besides the obelisk, Bernini had another problem to solve: the Apostolic Palace. They weren’t going to demolish the Apostolic Palace. There had been far too much investment in the sumptuous decoration

And the whole complex. Bernini had to come up with a layout for the square that would effectively bypass the palace. His first design was a trapezoid. At the open side of the trapezoid, he drew two circles arranged so that the obelisk was exactly in the middle. The result was an oval-shaped piazza.

Why the oval? With an oval you create movement which makes it feel more alive. But when we put the trapezoids and the oval shape together, there is potentially another symbolism. It turns into a keyhole, possibly referencing the keys of St. Peter and the key to salvation.

The effect was spectacular: 284 columns, 16 meters tall, forming two arms that welcomed and embraced the faithful in the piazza. These are composed of being four columns deep that divide the space up into three passageways. The central one is the largest, wide enough for carriages to go through,

And then the two smaller ones either side for pedestrians. The columns were carved from fine travertine and varied in diameter. In some parts of the piazza, the 4-row colonnade was interrupted and continued with a single row of columns. To crown it all, Bernini had 140 statues installed, each over 3 meters tall.

This last major building project of the complex was completed in 10 years but was not met with universal enthusiasm. Regardless of all of the work problems, it was built very, very quickly. But also under enormous criticism, not only of cost, but of design. A lot of people thought the design was hideous.

In his design, Bernini had envisioned a third colonnade, intended to surprise visitors when they first saw the basilica from the piazza. But when Pope Alexander the Seventh died, no pope after him was willing to commit to the expensive building project. Alexander the 7th died when the piazza was completed.

It had already cost millions. In fact, an estimate has been done for the cost of the building of the whole of St. Peter’s and the piazza as somewhere in the region of 9 billion dollars. With its spectacular design, St. Peter’s Square is the most symbolic and famous gateway to the Vatican city-state.

Beyond this symbolic border, you are officially no longer in Vatican, but in Italian territory. You cross from one country to another without even realizing it, just by setting foot in the square. But there is another, largely secret way in and out. This 800-meter-long corridor behind the arcades of St. Peter’s Square

Is known as the Passetto di Borgo, or the Borgo Passage. How was this tunnel created? What was it used for? Was it there to spirit popes in danger out of the Vatican or was it used for darker purposes? It was built as a covered passage,

Which people would not see what was going on inside it. And of course all sorts of stories emerged of popes going to meet their mistresses in Castel Sant’Angelo, or going to see the execution of somebody they particularly hated. The Vatican was not always surrounded by a wall.

In fact, a transformative event had to occur before the Pope decided he had to better protect himself. In 846 the Saracens took Ostia and they then advanced on Rome. They didn’t enter the city, but they sacked the suburban churches. It was certainly a terrible shock to Western Christendom.

This was a very important event for the history of the Vatican because it triggered the building of a wall, which was begun in 848. It took 4 years to complete the wall. Today, only a few sections remain. It’s built entirely of Roman bricks with some great blocks of stone.

It’s probably about 8 meters high, two-and-a-half meters thick, with towers along it, about 22 or 25 towers. And that wall links Castel Sant’Angelo to the Vatican hill up behind St. Peter’s and then runs down the other side, forming a long rectangular strip, which is about three kilometers long.

In the 13th century, an 800-meter-long section was altered. Using this Passetto di Borgo, the Pope could reach the nearby Castel Sant’Angelo fortress from the Apostolic Palace. It’s a way of linking the Vatican to Castel Sant’Angelo without going down into the street. The presence of the fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo was a safe haven,

Because the papal position in Rome was always threatened, not only from the outside, but also by riots and difficulties inside the city. This strategically important passage was modified again in the 15th century. The city wall was raised, and the former battlements became a tunnel with defensive slits, or embrasures, on both sides.

Again, an open passage lay along the top. So you could have soldiers above, soldiers below, and also soldiers could move freely and under cover, invisibly along this lower covered passageway. In the eventful history of the Vatican, the Passetto di Borgo twice proved its worth as a lifeline.

In 1494, when Alexander the Sixth was threatened by the French king Charles the Eighth, and he passed down the passetto to Castel Sant’Angelo. Most famously, in 1527, Clement the Seventh had to flee the troops of the emperor Charles the Fifth.

Of course, you have to imagine not just the pope going down the passetto, but a whole conclave of cardinals and bureaucrats. It was probably a wonderful scene of chaos inside the passetto. Apart from these two tense military episodes, very little is really known about what the passage was used for.

But there are plenty of rumors about secret rendezvous. Secret assignations are a feature of political life. The passetto is a sort of glorified back stairs. But because it’s secret, myths grew up around it and we will never really know. Following the last attack in 1527, peace reigned for the Vatican for 2-and-a-half centuries.

During this time, further architectural projects were completed. Of course, work on St. Peter’s Basilica continued, but other, no less astonishing buildings were also erected like this tower. It is called the Torre dei Venti, Tower of the Winds, and marks the second highest point of the Vatican.

It was not built to watch for enemies, but to study the stars. But why was the Vatican interested in astronomy? What influence did the tower have on the world’s calendars? And why was a hole bored in the side of the tower? A tiny opening was bored in the south façade.

It’s only about 4 centimeters in diameter. At 73 meters tall, the tower is visible from afar, but is not open to the public. It was erected at the end of the 16th century with a very specific purpose. The Tower of the Winds was built between 1578 and 1580

To confirm a calendar reform that the Pope wanted to complete before the end of his pontificate. The Pope in question was Gregory the Thirteenth and with this tower he hoped to correct the old Julian calendar, which had been introduced by Julius Caesar. It was not accurate enough and shifted the dates

Of religious holidays over the centuries. In fact, the Julian calendar does not work very well because it is inaccurate. The Julian year is about 11 minutes longer than the average solar year. These 11 minutes accumulate over time. After about 128 years, the discrepancy amounts to a whole day.

Behind the doors of a room on the second floor, the traces left behind by the world-famous astronomer Ignazio Danti are still visible. High on a wall in the middle of a fresco is an oculus, a hole through which sunlight falls. A line has been chiseled into the marble floor,

A meridian running from north to south. At the moment the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, its position is projected onto this line. And the sun’s entry into the various constellations can be marked on the line. The most important moments are the spring and fall equinoxes

And the summer and winter solstices. The decisive test was in 1581. There is no record of this, but it is said that Pope Gregory the Thirteenth came to this line on March 21st, 1581 to verify with his own eyes that this reform was necessary. On that day, he observed the ray of sunlight

Falling through the oculus 5.2 meters above the floor. According to Ignazio Danti’s calculations, the spot of light should have been in the constellation of Aries. The sun was supposed to be at this position on the line at 12 noon, but it wasn’t. It had already moved on considerably.

The 2 positions were 11 days apart. This was in fact the difference between the theoretical equinox and the actual equinox at that time. The calendar was reformed the next year. To compensate for the shift, officials changed how leap years were calculated and shortened the month of October.

They simply struck ten days from the calendar. The day after October 5th, 1582 became October 15th. The presentation in the Tower of the Winds, or the Gregorian Tower, only confirmed the earlier work of a scientific commission. But its staging symbolized the Pope’s power. This hole would have far-reaching consequences

And the Gregorian calendar would later dominate throughout the world. The reform naturally spread to Catholic countries first, and it met with resistance in Protestant lands. In England, the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1752. In Russia, for example, it took until 1918,

And Saudi Arabia was one of the last countries to adopt it in 2016. Everything that happened in the Vatican was intentional. Every work, every gesture had to demonstrate the Church’s greatness, and the same was true for the Sistine Chapel, only 200 meters from the Gregorian Tower.

Even before Michelangelo arrived in the Sistine Chapel it was already an extraordinarily beautiful space. The chapel is a 40-meter-long building situated parallel to St. Peter’s Cathedral. Its architecture is like that of a military structure. Long before new popes were elected in these rooms, the Sistine Chapel was a strategically important building.

At any given time there would be a liturgy going on in that space, you would have the entire hierarchy of the Church in one room. So the building was also constructed so there was a certain amount of security. For that reason, it was very easy to adapt the function of the Sistine Chapel

To the site where future pontiffs would be elected. Before Michelangelo set to work, the chapel had already been decorated by painters like Perugino and Botticelli. Michelangelo was asked to rework the ceiling to depict the 12 Apostles. The commission was not ambitious enough for the uncompromising artist.

The whole thing was crowned by a magnificent lapis lazuli blue sky, flecked with golden stars. But the ceiling began to flake. And this man, who never did things the way other people did them, began to envision a decoration that would be unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

The project was both an artistic and a technical challenge. More than a thousand square meters of surface had to be painted, 20 meters above the floor. The architect Donato Bramante had already designed scaffolding, but Michelangelo rejected it. It would have to be fastened to the ceiling

And would have left holes in his work. Michelangelo and Bramante didn’t get along very well, so Michelangelo said he would handle it himself. The wooden scaffolding that Michelangelo designed was not suspended from the ceiling but rested on pegs placed above the windows of the chapel.

The bridge on which the artist worked followed the curve of the ceiling. This made the extremely uncomfortable work less strenuous. The bridge would allow him to always be at the same distance, so basically it’s just an arm’s length away. The painting technique required that he stand with his head thrown back.

There were large prepared drawings of exactly what was going to go on that section of the ceiling. It would be applied, either incised or punched out, and that would guide the hand while he was working. For more than 3 years Michelangelo fought against muscle cramps, migraines and a stiff neck.

He illustrated scenes from the Bible, incorporating the ceiling vaults into his work. An accomplished sculptor, he painted so organically that his figures seemed lifelike. When he had finished half the ceiling, the scaffolding was moved so he could paint the other half. Even seeing his unfinished work was like a revelation.

It was hailed as a masterpiece from the first moment. The pope was delighted. Everyone was amazed by it, and really it affected art in the immediate decades to come. Michelangelo made an exceptionally profound imprint on the Sistine Chapel, but his contribution to St. Peter’s Basilica was just as unforgettable.

The tambour he designed inspired his successor, della Porta, who placed a dome on top. Bernini then took over as Vatican architect and designed the magnificent piazza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. But for the past 350 years, the architectural history of the Vatican has been quieter.

The available real estate in the world’s smallest nation is, after all, in short supply. So a lot of imagination was needed to build an archive. The Vatican Apostolic Archives are stored on a remarkable 80 kilometers of shelves. Where can documents covering half a square kilometer of space be stored?

What do these documents contain? And why were the archives said to be “secret” for over 400 years? The answers to these questions lie in the Cortile della Pigna. This treasury protects a vast number of historical documents and files. The building ? a 5000 square meter,

Two-story concrete bunker not far from the Vatican Museums was designed to withstand fires and to conduct damaging moisture to the outside. The architects constructed an additional room on each floor for the most valuable and sensitive documents. The temperature and humidity in these special rooms are kept absolutely constant.

After all, some of these documents are over 1000 years old. The most spectacular documents date from the 13th century and are written in Mongolian. They are among the oldest extant written documents. The files from the trial of Galileo Galilei are also stored there.

And the documents for which Luther was excommunicated in the 16th century. Important documents from religious history and diplomatic files are kept there. Among the carefully guarded treasures is a report on the trial of the Knights Templar, written on a 33-meter-long parchment. And this document from the 16th century is the petition

Of the English King Henry the Eighth for the annulment of his marriage. It bears the seals and signatures of 81 aristocrats. Less sensitive documents, ordinary administrative files and diplomatic correspondence from all eras and countries are stored outside the special climate-controlled rooms of the archive bunker. But the name “Vatican Secret Archive” is misleading.

The term “Vatican Secret Archive”, which was used from the 17th century onwards, is derived from the Latin term ‘secretus’, which refers to the Pope’s personal archive and absolutely not to secret contents. To avoid this confusion, Pope Francis changed the name from “Vatican Secret Archive” to “Vatican Apostolic Archive” in 2019.

The Apostolic Archive was founded in the 17th century and the original storage rooms are still in use today. The volume of documents is immense and growing daily. The underground archive bunker was built in 1982. It is a gold mine for historians but is not accessible to everyone.

The pope in office decides what can and cannot be viewed. The archives were opened to researchers under Pope Leo the Thirteenth, at the end of the 19th century. It is a rather ambivalent undertaking to open up to historical scholarship on the one hand and to defend Church history from attack on the other.

But from one papacy to the next, the Church has opened up more and more to scrutiny. Now the archives are accessible up to 1958. The history of the Vatican continues to be written day by day. And the most recent decades of its history have a special place on shelves behind carefully locked grills.

There they wait to be analyzed by historians many years from now. The Vatican continues to hold tremendous fascination. It’s a unique and secret place. Its architecture is extraordinary. The buildings and works of art bear witness to the deep belief in a Christian God, but also to struggles for power, money and prestige.

Reason enough for UNESCO to declare the entire territory of Vatican City a World Heritage Site.

Covering less than half a square kilometer, Vatican City may be small. But it’s still a place that exudes power and magnificence. The seat of the Pope, Vatican City is the focal point for 1.3 billion Catholics around the world. And it is a place shrouded in secrets.

In the 4th century AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine had a burial church built on the Vatican hill above the tomb of the Apostle Peter. This was the first Church of St. Peter. Over the centuries, the house of worship was repeatedly rebuilt and extended. But it wasn’t until the end of the 14th century that the papal seat of government was moved here, making it the center of the Papal States and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.

St. Peter’s Basilica, which would go on to become the largest church in the world, took on its present form in the 16th and 17th centuries. But its construction was a technical conundrum, one that would become a fascinating adventure, with exciting twists and turns. For example, how to build a dome 42 meters in diameter, culminating at an altitude of over 110 meters?

Everywhere in the Vatican, architecture celebrates the papacy. And behind all of these wonders lie a multitude of unsuspected technical challenges. To paint the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo designed his own scaffolding. To optimize St. Peter’s Square, Bernini imagined a highly original design capable of accommodating 300,000 faithful! Out of sight, an 800-meter secret passage was designed to allow the Pope to escape from the city. And, in order to store the Vatican’s massive archives, an underground bunker was built under the courtyard of the museums.

In the magnificence of emblematic rooms, behind doors traditionally closed to the public and with the help of 3D images, you’ll discover the building secrets of a megastructure with a truly unique history: The Vatican.

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