The City of the Vatican in Rome is an autonomous State governed directly by the Pontificate and officially recognized through the "Patti Lateranensi" of 1929 after Christ by the Italian Republic.

The State of the Vatican is located on the right shore of the Tevere River, around the Basilica of San Pietro, on the site of the antique "Ager Vaticanus", where, during the first period of the Imperial Rome, among the numerous Christians who suffered the martyr, it seems that there was also San Pietro. On the order of Mussolini, around 1936 after Christ, the urban asset of the area in front of the columns of Bernini was radically changed, and to leave the space for the "Via della Conciliazione", parts of the antique villages were destroyed. The street, that obviously completely changes the meaning of the columns and the rapport the work had with the rest of the area, was above all the tangible sign of the willing to recompose in a definitive way the disunion between the Italian State and the Church by ideally unifying the Basilica of the Vatican with the centre of Rome and the edifices of the Quirinale (Residence of the President of the Republic) and Campidoglio (Square designed by Michelangelo).
Nowadays the City of the Vatican is the smallest State of the world with its roughly 440000 square metres, but it maintains the privileges of an independent State such as to have its own public representations, its own philatelic and numismatic values and official bodies of press, such as the head of the Roman Observer.