Search This Blog

Showing posts with label Vatican City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vatican City. Show all posts

Saturday, 2 November 2024

Country Guide: The Vatican City

Name: The Vatican City (in Italian: La Città del Vaticano)

Continent: Europe

Capital (and Largest) City: The Vatican City

Language: Italian

Currency: Euro

Drives on the: Right

Time Zone: Central European Time

Adaptor Types: Type C, Type F and Type L

Description: The Vatican City, or simply the Vatican, is the world's smallest country at only 0.49 square kilometres. It is located entirely within the city of Rome in the country of Italy, and is governed by the Roman Catholic church. Despite its small size, it contains the world's largest church, St Peter's Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro), as well as the Vatican Museums, which contain an array of treasures, including the Sistine Chapel (Cappella Sistina).

Why You Should Visit: It is a cool experience for any traveller to say that they've been to the smallest country in the world, and it's also a lot of fun to travel from Italy to a whole other country just by crossing a street! Aside from that, St. Peter's Square (Piazza San Pietro) is an amazing place to experience, and it's definitely worth queuing to enter the basilica, which is absolutely beautiful. One thing I would not recommend is the Vatican Museums - we're glad to have visited but found it very overcrowded and underwhelming. But overall, I'd say a little trip into the Vatican City is an integral part of any holiday in Rome.

Fun Fact: Residents of the Vatican City consume more wine per capita than any other country!


My Blogposts About the Vatican City

Charlotte's Travel Adventures

- The Vatican City

- Rome: Day Four























Clockwise starting from top left: Inner courtyard of the Vatican Museums, Interior of St. Peter's Basilica, St. Peter's Square viewed from above, St. Peter's Square by night, Vatican Gardens viewed from above, Roof of St. Peter's Basilica

Check out the rest of my Country Guides here!

Sunday, 21 April 2024

Rome: Day Four

Our last full day in Rome was the only day when we didn't have anything specific booked, so we expected it to be more relaxed, but it actually turned out to be the day when we walked the most out of the entire trip!

After breakfast at a nice café, Claudio and I started the day's sightseeing at Largo di Torre Argentina. This square with its Roman ruins is believed to be the site where Julius Caesar was assassinated. However, it is now also famous for being a cat sanctuary! It was lovely to go there and watch the kitties wondering around through the ancient ruins.







Our next activity of the day was exploring Piazza Venezia (with its Venetian style palace) and the Victor Emmanuel II Monument. Although we didn't go up to the roof of the monument, as that costs 17€ each, we had a great time looking around both the inside and outside. It really is an incredibly impressive building.














After a bit more time exploring the outside of the Colosseum, we had a lot of fun visiting La Bocca della Verità (The Mouth of Truth)! You have to queue to get your photo with this ancient Roman sculpture, but the queue moves quickly, and it's free to visit. Legend says that the mouth will bite your hand off if you tell a lie!

After your visit, you move through into a pretty church that has a gift shop. I took the opportunity to buy a Roman Holiday postcard, as I absolutely love this movie. In fact, this is one of two films that gave me Wanderlust to visit Rome - the other being the Lizzie McGuire Movie, haha!










Next to the church, you can find two Roman temples that are absolutely worth checking out: the round Temple of Hercules Victor, and the Temple of Portunus, which is somewhat like the Parthenon.





Afterwards, we went back to Pasta Imperiale for lunch, this time trying Fettucine Alfredo, a Roman pasta dish, which was very tasty and also very filling!




Then we spent most of the afternoon inside Castel Sant'Angelo. I always love visiting castles, and really enjoyed this one! It was actually built as a mausoleum for the emperor Hadrian, but was later used by popes, and has some beautifully ornate rooms inside.

The views from the roof across the city and the Vatican are also stunning.















After some delicious gelato, we finished off our last evening in Rome with a quick trip to see the Vatican City by night.




Rome had been on both of our bucket lists for a long time, so our week there was a real dream come true. It was fabulous to see all the iconic sights, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, as well as some quieter spots, like Villa Borghese. We also enjoyed visiting the Vatican City - a new country for both of us - and having a relaxed beach day in Santa Severa.

Hopefully, we'll have the chance to go back at some point in the future, but we both feel that we really got the most out of our time there (despite the nasty cold I had at the beginning!) and we have loads of wonderful memories to look back on from the Eternal City. ❤

Tuesday, 26 March 2024

The Vatican City

Ever since I first started my travel obsession over a decade ago, I've been fascinated by the idea of visiting the Vatican City. For starters, it's located within one of the most beautiful and interesting cities on the planet. Secondly, it's by far the smallest country in the world, at only 0.49 square kilometres, making it an fun bucket list destination for any traveller.

When I was living in Austria, I absolutely loved the fact that I could travel to foreign countries so easily and spontaneously, just by taking a train or a bus. But travelling to the Vatican City was the first time I've been able to actually walk to another country, which is even more of a novelty! (Okay, so I have walked between Wales and England while visiting Chepstow, but not between official sovereign states before.)

So, Claudio and I made visiting the Vatican one of our priorities during our week in Rome, and prebooked tickets to visit the Vatican Museums on our first morning. 

Unfortunately the morning didn't get off to the best start; Claudio had had a bad cold the week prior to our holiday, and while he was now on the mend, I woke up that day feeling fatigued and with a streaming nose. It's always annoying to get a cold, but it's especially irritating for it to happen when you're just starting a much-anticipated holiday, as opposed to during a normal working week! But all the same, I didn't want to let it stop me from enjoying our time abroad. So I took some cold and flu medication, and we set out on foot to the entrance to the Vatican Museums.

Being completely honest, I have to say that the Vatican Museums were the attraction that disappointed us the most during our week in Rome.

For one, it was definitely the attraction where we had to queue the longest to get in, despite the fact that we had prebooked tickets. Additionally, it was by far the most crowded place we visited during the week, which surprised me, as I'd expected places like the Colosseum and the Pantheon to be much busier. And on top of that, it just wasn't really a place that wowed us that much.

Don't get me wrong, there is an absolute array of incredible artefacts in the museum, from treasures of Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt, to some of the most valuable works of art ever created, including the world-famous Sistine Chapel. It was very interesting to see all of these beautiful things - I especially liked the Egyptian cat statues!

But at the same time, the place was so huge, and so full of sculptures and paintings and gold, that it was hard to take it all in. The crowds of tourists (including plenty of children far too young to appreciate this kind of place) also made it a less than relaxing environment.

And when we arrived in the Sistine Chapel, squashed in with dozens of other people, it was hard not to feel underwhelmed. Of course it was beautiful, but it didn't seem that incredibly different to what we'd already seen in the rest of the museum. I couldn't help remembering the painted ceiling of the cathedral in Udine, which I was really blown away by - I thought the Sistine Chapel would have a similar effect, but it just didn't really connect with me, probably because it was so small and crowded.

So, overall, we didn't feel like the 25€ we spent on our Vatican Museums tickets were that well spent, and we certainly won't be going back there if we return to Rome in the future. But, having said that, it is something that we felt we had to do during our first visit to the city, and at least we can say that we've now been there and done that (just like with the Mona Lisa!). 




After visiting the musuem, we had to go back to our hotel, as it was raining and Claudio had forgotten his umbrella. We had breakfast at a nice French place next to the hotel, and then set off towards the Vatican again, this time to visit St. Peter's Square, or Piazza San Pietro.

If the Vatican Museums weren't really worth visiting, St. Peter's Square definitely was! The size of it is incredible, and the architecture is beautiful, from the stunning basilica, to the Apostolic Palace and the Colonnades.  











We decided to queue up to enter St. Peter's Basilica, and we're very glad we did. Although the queue was long, it moved quickly, so it wasn't long before we were inside. And the inside of the building was incredible! It's actually the biggest church in the world, and the sheer size of it is amazing. It's also unbelievably ornate with so much gold and a level of detail that's hard to take in.






After spending a long time exploring the church, we decided to pay to go up to the top of the cupola. It costs 10€ per person to take a lift up to the roof, and from there you can climb up about 300 steps to get to the top. I wasn't quite sure about the idea at first, as I was feeling very tired with my cold, but we wanted to make the most of our time in this tiny, unique country, so we decided to go for it.

It was a special experience to arrive on the roof and to see the cupola up close. There was even a little café up there, where we bought croissants!




We then started the climb up to the very top of the building. Some parts of the staircase were incredibly narrow, and were in a spiral shape, so you couldn't see where they ended - the claustrophobia was actually worse than the climb itself. But in the end, we arrived at the top, and were able to look out across the whole of the Vatican, including the parts that we didn't visit, such as the Vatican Gardens.





After coming back down to the ground again, we both agreed that it was time to head back to Italy for a pizza!




To sum up, visiting the Vatican was a very unique and interesting experience. It's actually the 30th country that I've visited and Claudio's 10th, and I think it's quite fun that it was the smallest country in the world that got us up to those particular milestones!

Of course, after our day in the Vatican, we still had plenty left in Rome to explore. Our next day was spent exploring sights including the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and much more...