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Palazzo Lateranense

Typology: Buildings

Address

Address: Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano
Zone: Rione Monti (Colosseo-S.Giovanni-S.Maria Maggiore) (Roma centro)

Contacts

Opening times

Palazzo del Laterano is open with the same hours as the Museo Storico Vaticano

Information

To visit Palazzo del Laterano you must purchase the admission ticket to the Museo Storico Vaticano

Modalità di partecipazione: Booking required

Description

When Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome after the popes’ period in Avignon he found that the palace had been gutted by fire and he was obliged to install his household in the Vatican.
The present building was constructed in 1586 by Domenico Fontana during the reign of Sixtus V as the summer residence of the pope. Popes preferred the Vatican and the Quirinal to this building and it was used in different ways during the following centuries. It was a hospital, a hospice, the archive of the Papal states and in 1838 it was the seat of the Museo Gregoriano, instituted by Gregory XVI. In 1960 pope John XXIII moved the museum to the Vatican and the palace became the seat of the Vicariate. Since 1987 the piano nobile is the seat of the Museo Storico Vaticano.
The building, inspired by palazzo Farnese, and realized in the characteristic austere style of the Counterreformation, is rectangular and has three facades (the fourth is on the right hand side of the basilica of S.Giovanni in Laterano). Each façade has a big door with rusticated or smooth columns and a balcony on top. Two of these balconies have the coat of arms of pope Sixtus V Peretti (1585-1590), the third one has the coats of arms of pope Clement XII Corsini (1730-1740). On the ground floor are big architravated windows and small windows underneath. On the first and second floors are windows with curved and triangular tympanums. On top is a belvedere loggia with columns. Inside is a courtyard surrounded by a portico of three superimposed orders. From a monumental stair you access the papal apartment formed by ten rooms and one chapel. The chapel is frescoed with the deeds of pope Sixtus V, in the rooms are the episodes of the history of imperial Rome and the stories of the Old and the New Testament.
The Lateran Treaty was signed in the Sala della Conciliazione on February 11, 1929 between the Holy See and the Italian State. Since then the palace is part of the state of the Vatican city and enjoys the privileges of extraterritoriality.

See also

Culture and leisure › Cultural heritage › Museums
Culture and leisure › Cultural heritage › Architectural and historical heritage

Agreement with

Hospitality › Services › Tourist services and fairs
Last checked: 2022-06-20 12:08
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