The Pope’s Residence by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 20, 1874

The Pope’s Residence.

By Editor

The Vatican, the official residence of the pope, stands directly against the side of St. Peter’s church, under the guns of the castle of St. Angelo; and it is the most extensive castle in the world. In a building on this site Charlemagne had quarters when in Rome. The larger part of this palace was built about the time Columbus was seeking America. The edifice is a vast block, shaped like the letter L, and contains about twenty courts open to the sky, and eleven thousand halls, chapels, saloons, and apartments. The main entrance portal of the Vatican is under a mighty Doric colonnade, which cost 850,000 scudi. One of the halls in the Vatican is 2,131 feet long and twenty-seven feet wide. The library of the Vatican possesses 24,000 manuscripts, 50,000 printed books, and over 2,000 volumes of papal archives, which last comprise the written history of this great branch of the nominal church. An armory, a mint, a magnificent collection of pictures, a still more wonderful collection of ancient sculpture and inscriptions, and a government manufactory of mosaic, are included in this palace; there are no less than ten thousand different shades of colored glass used in the mosaic factory of the Vatican. Michael Angelo and Raphael executed their great works upon the walls of the palace.—Ed.