Gallery of Maps

The maps were designed by Ignazio Danti, a Dominican friar, mathematician and cosmographer who had made maps for the Medici in Florence. He surveyed the regions personally and gave them to a team of painters to execute in fresco over about three years. Look for small scenes of historic battles and sieges set into the maps, such as the siege of Malta, and for the way the coastlines curve with a real cartographer's precision, remarkable for the fifteen eighties. The ceiling, painted by a team led by Cesare Nebbia and Girolamo Muziano, shows scenes from church history, each placed above the region where the event took place.

Pope Gregory the Thirteenth, the same pope who reformed the calendar in fifteen eighty two, ordered the gallery so that he could survey his territories and the whole peninsula without leaving the palace. The gallery was restored between twenty eleven and twenty sixteen, and the colours now shine as they did four centuries ago. It is part of the main route to the Sistine Chapel, so the crowds move quickly; pause for a moment by the map of your favourite Italian region, or the great map of the port of Venice, and let the rest of the stream flow past.

Did You Know? Pope Gregory the Thirteenth walked the gallery as a way of inspecting his states, and the maps are accurate enough that most modern towns can still be found on them.