A VOYAGE THROUGH 16TH CENTURY ITALY. THE VATICAN MAPS

Inside the Vatican the whole of Italy can be entirely viewed, region after region. A gallery commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII, 40 maps painted around 1580, along a corridor that extends for 120 metres, by a staff of landscape painters supervised by the geographer Ignazio Danti. On one wall the Apennine hills and the regions touched by the Tyrrhenian Sea; on the opposite wall the regions bordering on the Adriatic Sea. Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, accompanies us in this voyage through 16th century Italy. A country already unified even before Cavour or Garibaldi, a country that, although politically divided, appears united by history, language, religion and culture.