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As much as we'd all love to flip a switch, get rid of COVID, and return to traveling like normal, it doesn't seem like that will happen anytime soon. That's the bad news. The good news is that museums and attractions around the world are providing virtual tours, allowing you to experience them from the comfort of your couch. Among the most iconi...

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Jesus, Mary and Joseph don't normally appear alongside astronauts or Darth Vader-like figures, but the Vatican has upset some Catholics by bringing them together in its latest nativity scene. Pope Francis inaugurated the scene, which features a number of life-sized ceramic figures, on Friday, but many people have expressed their disapproval of its...

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Saint Peter’s is Rome and  Rome is Saint Peter’s: the connection between the city and the most famous church in Italy is so deeply rooted we tend to forget that, technically, the basilica and its cupolone are not in Rome and not even in Italy, for that matter, because the Vatican is an independent entity.  The small city-state was created, in the f...

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Chicago writer-director Lucia Mauro’s new documentary, I Have a Name – that puts a respectful face on homelessness through the programs of  The Chicago HELP Initiative – won Best Documentary at the 2020 Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film Festival at the Vatican in Rome. The prestigious film festival, under the High Patronage of the Pontific...

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Italian-born Cardinal-designate Silvano Tomasi describes himself as “one of those 40 million Americans who were born outside the United States, but at the same time are part of the makeup of the country.” The Italian-American cardinal-designate, who celebrated his 80th birthday on Columbus Day, has not lived full time in the United States since 198...

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What: #RAFFAELLO500 | Raphael in the Vatican: A special year for the Vatican Museums - When: Tuesday, November 10, 2020 | 11:00 PST Zoom Webinar with BARBARA JATTA, Director of the Vatican Museums On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Raffaello Sanzio’s death, while we wait for cultural institutions to overcome these difficult times, the netw...

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The Vatican City is now on the UK's quarantine list announced by Grant Shapps yesterday afternoon. I was there at the time, savouring the once inconceivable pleasure of having the Vatican Museums almost to myself. In the Pinacoteca picture gallery I sat alone admiring the larger than life tapestries made from Raphael’s cartoons, Leonardo da Vinci’s...

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Rightly considered a jewel of world art, visiting the Sistine Chapel is a defining experience, one that leaves a mark in the mind and the soul. Famously painted by Michelangelo, in truth other famous artists participated to its frescoing, too, including Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli. If you have not had the chance to see this magni...

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While governments around the world enact strict measures to attempt to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, people without a fixed home or living in extreme poverty remain stranded in deserted cities. “Right now, the homeless continue to be homeless,” Pope Francis said an interview with his biographer Austen Ivereigh published Wednesday (A...

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With the Eternal City turned into a stark De Chirico landscape because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Vatican will mark an uprecedented Holy Week as celebrations leading up to and including Easter, Christianity’s most important holiday, will allow only for virtual viewing. In past years Settimana Santa, the name for Holy Week in Italy, was a period...

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