Commemorative Exhibition
The exhibition, aiming to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Vatican City State, opens with an extraordinary 3-D birchen scale model reproducing the current Vatican City State.
The plastic presents the city, its buildings and characteristics. The exhibition is divided into five sections:
SECTION I – The Vatican City State before 1929
The first section analyses the image and topography of the Vatican through the centuries. The items on display
witness the city planning and topographic changes the city underwent over time. This section also points out the connection between the Vatican City State and Rome and covers the period of the “Roman question” (1870-1929).
Several maps and unedited topographic images belonging to the Vatican Library, to the Fabric of St Peter and to the Governorate are shown.
SECTION II – Pope Pius XI
The second section is dedicated to the figure of Pope Achille Ratti, Pius XI (1922 - 1939), an essential figure of the Vatican City State. This section is centred on him, and on the privileged relationship he had with culture thanks to his assignments as Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library and of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. In addition the section presents his restless activity as “builder” of seminaries throughout Italy as well as the architectural works whose building he encouraged in the Vatican State and in Rome before 1929.
Also on display are his precious and refined cope manufactured in Como, his beautiful mitre, one of his unedited portraits and many papers and antiques concerning him and his papacy.
SECTION III – The Lateran Treaty
The third section is dedicated to the Lateran Treaty (11 February 1929), to the Treaty and the Concordat, which were signed by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, and Benito Mussolini, Head of the Italian Government.
Unedited papers documenting the long negotiations preceding 1929 are on display. The original of the Treaty, kept in the Vatican Secret Archives, is shown to the public for the first time along with its annexes on the extra-territorial areas established by the Treaty. A rich set of photographic documentation coming from the graphic collections of the Vatican Apostolic Library provides the historical moments connected to the event with documentary evidence.
SECTION IV – The Construction of the State
The construction of the State is the core of the exhibition. ‘As territorial sovereignty is the universally recognized and essential condition of jurisdictional sovereignty, therefore at least that piece of territory is necessary which is sufficient to establish sovereignty - that piece of territory without which sovereignty could not exist, because it would have no place to rest’ (Pius XI). Immediately after 11 February 1929 the buildings and infrastructures of the new state started to be erected.
The projects and plans of the Head Office of Technical Services of the Governorate offer exhaustive documentation of the different buildings.
Some documents, coming from the State Archive of Turin (Fondo Giuseppe Momo) represent the essential completion of a collection of documents that are eventually exhaustive on this topic.
Multimedia areas offer an insight into some buildings that otherwise would not have been presented sufficiently, due to the limited exhibition space.
SECTION V – The Other Pontificates
The long historical period that has elapsed between the end of the papacy of Pius XI (1939) and our times has symbolically been represented, because of the limited space, through the six papacies that have occurred (Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI).
Each Pope is represented by his own portrait, coming from the collections of the Vatican Museums.
At the end of the exhibition is an artistic masterpiece created on purpose for the celebrations: the Civitas Vaticana, a new perspective map of the Vatican City State as it actually is, engraved with etching and graver on copper and
printed in limited edition of 330 copies.
The work, crafted by Pierluigi Isola for the Vatican Apostolic Library, aims to be the symbolical image of the Vatican City State of XXI century, just in the same way as the official map of Lorenzo Tealdy was in 1929. For this reason the two maps have been chosen as symbols of this exhibition.