Vatican City

The Vatican Museums rank among the largest and most visited museum complexes in the world, drawing millions of visitors each year to a collection that spans millennia of art, cartography, and papal history. Housed within the sovereign territory of Vatican City, the museums were founded in the early sixteenth century when Pope Julius II placed ancient sculptures on public display, beginning an accumulation of works that now fills over fifty galleries. The Sistine Chapel, with its celebrated ceiling painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, remains the centrepiece of any visit, while the Raphael Rooms and the Gallery of Maps offer further evidence of the Renaissance patronage that shaped this extraordinary complex.

The Vatican Gardens, which cover more than half of Vatican City's total area, provide a quieter counterpart to the museums themselves. Laid out over centuries with fountains, grottos, and formal hedgerows, the gardens are accessible via an open bus tour that moves through grounds otherwise closed to general visitors. Together, the museums and gardens offer a rare combination of artistic heritage and landscaped history within a single, compact sovereign state at the centre of Rome.