Vatican City

Pope Sixtus IV's private chapel (1473–1481) inside the Apostolic Palace, covered inside by Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes (1508–1512) and his Last Judgment on the altar wall (1536–1541) — the most ambitious single artistic undertaking in Western art.

The heart of the Catholic world: a Renaissance church begun in 1506, topped by Michelangelo's dome, housing Bernini's baldachin and the claimed tomb of Saint Peter beneath the floor.

Bernini's ellipse of travertine colonnades embraces visitors in front of St. Peter's Basilica, centred on a 25.5-metre Egyptian obelisk moved here in 1586 — the canonical arrival point for the world's largest religious community.

Twenty-three hectares of gardens, buildings and monuments covering more than half of Vatican City, with secular and religious sculpture, fountains, the Palazzetto dei Vigili and views back across Rome from the western perimeter.

The pope's collection spread across dozens of galleries: roughly 70,000 works, 20,000 on display, including the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Raphael's Stanze, the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoön — one of the most overwhelming accumulations of ancient and Renaissance art anywhere.

An ancient Roman burial ground beneath the northern edge of Vatican City, excavated in the 20th century and now partially visible as an open-air archaeological site, containing tombs, frescoes and the preserved remains of the road that gave it its name.