Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chiesa di San Francesco
d'Assisi a Ripa
CHURCH
(Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi 88; 7.30am-noon & 2-7.30pm; Viale di Trastevere, Viale di
Trastevere)
St Francis is said to have stayed here in the 13th century, and you can still see
the rock that he used as a pillow. The church's chief attraction, though, is Bernini's
Beata
Ludovica Albertoni
(Blessed Ludovica Albertoni; 1674), a work of highly charged sexual
ambiguity that shows Ludovica, a Franciscan nun, in a state of rapture as she reclines,
eyes shut, mouth open, one hand touching her breast.
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1
Vatican City, Borgo
& Prati
The Vatican, the world's smallest sovereign state (a mere 0.44 sq km), sits atop the low-
lying Vatican hill just a few hundred metres west of the Tiber. Centred on the domed bulk
of St Peter's Basilica, it is the capital of the Catholic world and jealous guardian of one of
the world's greatest artistic patrimonies.
The state, established under the terms of the 1929 Lateran Treaty, is the modern vestige
of the Papal States, the papal fiefdom that ruled Rome and much of central Italy until uni-
fication in 1861. As part of the agreement, signed by Mussolini and Pope Pius XI, the
Holy See was also given extraterritorial authority over a further 28 sites in and around
Rome, including the basilicas of San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Maria Maggiore and
San Paolo Fuori le Mura.
As an independent state, the Vatican has its own postal service, newspaper, radio station
and army. The nattily dressed Swiss Guards, all practising Catholics from Switzerland,
were first used by Pope Julius II in 1506 and are still responsible for the pope's personal
security.
The Vatican's current look is the culmination of more than 1000 years of chipping and
chopping. The Leonine walls date from 846 when Leo IV had them put up after a series of
Saracen raids, while the Vatican palace, now home to the Vatican Museums, was origin-
ally constructed by Eugenius III in the 12th century.
Between the Vatican and the river lies the cobbled, medieval district of the Borgo, while
to the north, Prati is a graceful residential area.
