Gallery of Maps

The Gallery of Maps is a 120-metre corridor inside the Vatican Museums whose walls carry 40 large topographic frescoes of Italy. Pope Gregory XIII had it laid out between 1580 and 1585 to designs by the Dominican monk and geographer Ignazio Danti, mapping the Papal States and the Italian regions in an ideally Catholic light. The gilded stucco ceiling above the maps shows saints and miracles tied to each region, a theology of geography in image and plaster. Today the gallery is one of the most photogenic stretches on the route to the Sistine Chapel, often densely packed; walk slowly and you will spot battles, volcanoes and ships in the maps.