Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1903-08-01
HISTORYOF THEVATICAN
Famous Residence of the Pope
and His Court.
VAST PALACE OF MANY ROOMS.

ttnn Structure of It's Kind, 1t Cow
ers Area of About Thirteen
Acres and Has Eight Grand Stair
cases - The Pope Has Only Three
Rooms, Furnished Very simply.
Four centuries and q half have
passed since it came into the mind of
Pope Nicholas V. to make the Vatican
the largest and most beautiful palace
of the Christian world, says tine New
York Herald. He planned, to include
within its walls all the offices of the
papal government. Every cardinal was
to be housed within its precincts. But
little was accomplished by this pope
toward the fulfllment of his purpose:
All that he saw finished was the Tower
OF Borgia and private chapel.
Nearly every succeeding pope has
added something to the building of the
Vatican until it has become an i'm
mense pile Of irregular architecture
descriptive of the successive pontifi-
Gates and telling of the individual
characters and tastes of the various
popes who inhabited the palace long
enough to leave some impression of
their own. After the popes retired from
.Avignon they found their former resi-
dence on the Lateran hill in ruins
and adopted the Vatican in its stead in
order to obtain the greater security
given by the Castle of st. Angelo, close
at hand, a covered gallery connecting
the palace and the fortress along the
north line of the Leonine wall.
Alexander VI. constructed what is
known as the old palace, called the
Appartamenti Borgia, and to this part
SiXtus " added in 1474 the Sixtine
chapel. The Belvedere was erected by
Innocent VIII. in 1890, and julius II.
united the Belvedere to the palace by
the celebrated loggie. To julius II.
the Vatican is indebted for the be-
ginning of the museum, and its founda-
lions were laid in the gardens of the
BeIvedere under his initiation. After
his death Leo y. completed the loggie,
employing Raphael to direct the work.
By 1000 the section of the palace was
completed which includes the ordinary
residence of the pope. 1t is the most
conspicuous portion of the mass of
buildings rising above the piazza of st.
Peter. The loggie were inclosed in
the weather the frescoes of Raphael,
and in the course of his long reign he
made many Improvements in the pic
tUre galleries.
The special work by which Leo XIII.
left his mark on the Vatican was the
decoration of the Gallery Of Candle
labra with frescoes by Seitz, with a
pavement of precious marbles and an
tique statuary from recent excavations,
while he built a reading room for stu
dents in the Vatican library and new
wing for printed books, further con-
ferring an immense boon on foreign
students by throwing open the Vatican
archives and providing them with ac-
commodation.
The celebrated staircase, the Scala
Regia, was constructed by Bernini I'M
der Urban VIII. Subsequent popes
built the range Of apartments for the
Museo Pho ClementiDo and the Egyp-
tan and Etruscan museums. The fourth
side of the Cortele di San Damaso was
closed by Plus TX, who reconstructed
the great staircase leading from the ar
cades OF the piazza into the court.
Altogether the Vatican palace covers
an area of about thirteen and one-half
acres, Of which about six are occupied
by the twenty courts, and contains per-
haps q thousand halls, chapeIs, saloons
and private apartments, the greater
part of which are occupied by coIlec-
lions and showrooms, comparatively
small part of the building being set
apart for the papaI court.
The length of the palace is 1,151 feet
and its breadth 767. 1t has eight grand
staircases. The principal entrance to
the Vatican is at the end of the right
colonnade of st. Peters, where door
on the right opens upon the staircase
beading to the Cortile di Damaso The
famous Sixtine chapel, which figures
so prominently in connection with q
pope's death and the election of his
successor, was formerly hung on fes-
rivals with the tapestries executed
from the cartoons of Raphael. The up
per portion is decorated in fresco by
the great Florentine masters of the fif-
teenth century. On the pillar between
the windows are the figures of twenty
eight popes by Sandro BOtticelli. The
vast fresco of 1.-The Last Judgment
occupied Michael Angelo seven years
and was finished in 1541 under Paul
III.
Only those strangers admitted to a
special audience ever see the small por-
tion of the Vatican inhabited by the
pope. The three rooms occupied by the
pontiff are furnished with the utmost
simplicity. They consist of the bare
green saloon, the red saloon, containing
q throne thanked by benches, and the
bedroom, with yellow draperies, large
writing table and a few pictures by old
masters.
From the windows of the Egyptian
museum one can look down upon the
inner garden of the Vatican known as
the Giardino della Pigna, from the ia
NOUS Pigna, a gigantic fur cone, said
once to have crowned the summit Of
the mausoIeum of Hadrian.
r,t,o 1ro-doy, uoc tho second eroat