Vatican City and Rome: what is in which country

The short answer

Vatican City is not part of Italy. It is a sovereign state that came into being on 11 February 1929, when the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy signed the Lateran Treaty.[1] The city of Rome surrounds it, and Rome is in Italy, but the border between them is a border between two countries.

For a traveller the practical consequence is simple to state. St. Peter's Basilica, St. Peter's Square and the Vatican Museums are in Vatican City. Vatican News notes that the state has its own museum, and that the present St. Peter's Basilica replaced the basilica Constantine built over the Apostle's burial place in the Vatican area.[1] The Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain are in Italy. XTOUR records places under the country they are in, so its Italy pages do not list Vatican sites as Italian, and it does not yet hold any Vatican City records.

The Holy See and Vatican City are not the same thing

The two names are often used as if they meant one thing. Vatican News draws the line clearly: Vatican City State is the geographical state that has existed only since 1929, while the Holy See is a juridical entity distinct from it. According to Vatican News, the treaty also ended the standoff between the popes and the Kingdom of Italy that followed Italy's annexation of Rome in 1870.[1]

The distinction matters because the Holy See holds property in Rome outside Vatican City. Vatican News says several of its buildings around the city, most notably the major basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial rights under the Lateran Treaty.[1]

Two different World Heritage listings

UNESCO keeps the two apart as well. The World Heritage Committee inscribed Vatican City as a property in its own right, No. 286, in 1984.[2] The Historic Centre of Rome is a separate property. In 1990, at the joint request of the Holy See and Italy, the Committee extended it to the Holy See's extraterritorial properties in the historic centre, among them the complexes of St John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, and to the Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls, and recorded the extended site under Italy and the Holy See, each according to its jurisdiction.[3]

So a reader who sees "UNESCO World Heritage" on a sign in Rome may be looking at either listing. St. Peter's is in Vatican City. St Paul's Outside the Walls, included in the 1990 extension the Holy See requested jointly with Italy, is listed with the Historic Centre of Rome.[3]

What this means for planning a Rome stay

Rome is the base, because the city surrounds Vatican City. XTOUR's reading is that the Vatican belongs in a Rome stay, planned with one difference in mind: its sites run on rules, tickets and calendars set by Vatican institutions, not Italian ones.

The Vatican Museums illustrate the point. Their Prices and Tickets page says the only official site for buying tickets online is tickets.museivaticani.va, and warns of scams and websites using domains similar to the official one, which may charge significantly higher prices.[4] XTOUR does not repeat the museums' hours, prices or free days here; read them on the museums' site.

XTOUR has not read the visitor rules that the basilica's administration publishes, so this page states none of them. Read them on the basilica's own pages before you go.

What XTOUR covers, and what it does not

XTOUR's Italy coverage records Rome as a destination and the places inside the city as Italian places. It does not record any place in Vatican City, and it does not assign the Vatican Museums or St. Peter's Basilica to Italy, because that would be a false statement of containment. XTOUR has not yet decided how it would record places in Vatican City; whatever it decides, it will not record them under Italy.

For the rest of Rome, start with the Rome destination page and the Italy travel guide, and for the ancient monuments, the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine ticket guide.