Rome. Vatican. The State within a City.

Perched on the western bank of the Tiber and occupying 108½ independent acres within Rome, Vatican City is the last foothold of the Catholic Church, once the mightiest power in Europe. Since the Lateran Treaty of 1929, the Pope has reigned with full sovereignty over this tiny theocracy, but he must remain neutral in Roman and Italian politics. As the spiritual leader of millions of Catholics around the world, however, the Pope's influence extends far beyond the walls of his tiny domain. The nation preserves its independence by minting coins (Italian lire with the Pope's face), running a separate postal system, and having its own mayor. The Vatican is protected by the Swiss Guards, the world's most photographed military men. The guards wear flamboyant uniforms designed, not by Michelangelo, as tour guides insist, but by some nameless seamstress in 1914, perhaps inspired by a Raphael fresco in the Raphael Rooms of the Vatican Musuem. Although priests, nuns, and other official visitors are allowed in all areas, tourists are only admitted to the Basilica and the stellar Vatican Museums.

What's it like to live in the Vatican? It's no party. More than 95% male, the population must conform to a set of rules even the meanest hostel owner would never dare to enforce. The curfew is 10pm, as the last city gates lock up then for the night, and no commercial entertainment is permitted. The 800 inhabitants are nonetheless very well connected: the Vatican's phone per capita ratio is the highest in the world.

St. Peter's Basilica

For the Jubilee Year of 2000, the Vatican washed its face and put on a clean shirt, and the results are still visible. The pilgrims have all gone home, but St. Peter's still gleams proudly at the center of Rome. The basilica, perhaps the most famous in Europe, is approached by V.d. Conciliazione, a column-lined avenue built by Mussolini in the 1930s. The road provided Benito with a prime parade route, and offers a grand, if austere, entrance to Bernini's elliptical Piazza San Pietro. It seems that Bernini wanted the marble piazza to greet pilgrims as a surprise after their wanderings through the medieval Borgo district. Bernini still has the last word, though, as his piazza - with 140 statues overlooking two fountains and an obelisk originally erected in Alexandria - continues to wow the masses daily.

The crown jewel in the papal hat, however, remains the basilica itself. Designed in turn by Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo, the basilica marks the resting spot of the bones of St. Peter, the church's founder. A Christian structure of some kind has stood on this spot since Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion in the middle of the 4th century. In 1506, with Constantine's original brick basilica aging, Pope Julius II called upon Donato Bramante to carry out his monumental vision of a new church for what he saw as a new world. Bramante designed the new church with a centralized Greek-cross plan - a decision which proved contentious for the next 100 years. Bramante's work was so expensive that he continually asked the cardinals for money. The cardinals, in turn, sold indulgences, which eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, and a boatload of religious dissidents who settled America.

When Bramante died before completing his project, Raphael took over, followed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who spent seven years building a 25 ft. model of his design that cost as much as a small church to build. These presumptuous artists usurped Bramante's design and changed St. Peter's to a Latin cross (in which one hall of the church is longer than the others). In 1546, Paul III handed 72-year-old Michelangelo the job of completing the basilica, with three times the budget. Even though he and Bramante reportedly hated each other, Michelangelo reverted to the Greek-cross plan because of his love for symmetry. But Michelangelo, too, was finished before his project. Carlo Maderno put the finishing touches on the basilica, lengthening St. Peter's nave and adding three chapels. The basilica's famous double-shelled dome was designed by Michelangelo, and its central apex lies directly over St. Peter's bones. The dome has a diameter of 42.3m, intentionally one meter short of the diameter of the Pantheon - a building Michelangelo greatly admired. Giacomo della Porta altered the ribs and lantern after Michelangelo's death. Make sure to look at the golden ball just below the cross on the top of the dome - 16 people can comfortably fit inside.

St. Peter's Dome

High above the baldacchino and the altar rises the dome designed by Michelangelo, built with the same double shell as Brunelleschi's earlier one in Florence, but designed more spherically, like the Pantheon. Out of reverence for that ancient architectural wonder, Michelangelo is said to have made this cupola a meter shorter in diameter than the Pantheon's, but the measurements of the dome are still eye-popping. The highest point towers 120m above the floor and the diameter of the dome measures in at 42.3m. At the time of Michelangelo's death in 1564, only the drum of the dome had been completed. Work remained at a standstill until 1588, when 800 laborers were hired to complete it. Toiling round the clock, they finished the dome on May 21, 1590.

Around the bottom of the drum, the key biblical passage of the basilica is inscribed: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; I will give you the keys to heaven." As the scriptural justification for the opulence that is St. Peter's, references to these lines abound throughout the rest of the Vatican, especially in the Sistine Chapel. Representations of Mary, Christ, and the Evangelists adorn one level of the dome, choirs of angels fill up four more levels, and God presides on high.

Treasury of Saint Peter's

The Treasury of St. Peter's contains gifts donated to his tomb in past centuries. The marble plaque to the right on the entrance hall lists all the Popes in order, starting with Peter in AD 64. Among the highlights of the nine-room museum are: the Solomonic column from the Basilica of Constantine; the "dalmatic of Charlemagne," an intricately designed robe that the illiterate Holy Roman Emperor donned for sacred ceremonies; the copy of the Pietà made in 1934; a clay statue of one of Bernini's angels (for a closer look than on the Ponte S. Angelo); the magnificent bronze tomb of Sixtus IV; and the stone sarcophagus of Junnius Bassius (4th century), which is decorated with 10 biblical episodes from Adam and Eve to the capture of St. Peter. Lest you think Christianity was always a bed of gilded diamond-encrusted roses, note the forboding device labeled "strumento usato per torturare i cristiani."