The Vatican by train: a new kind of papal visit
Posted on October 10th, 2018
Visitors can now combine a tour of the Vatican with a wander around the pope’s summer palace – traveling by the Pontiff’s railway.
Things don’t come more Da Vinci Code than a ride on the Pope’s railway – the centrepiece of a new tour launched by the Vatican Museums this month. The train departs the Vatican City’s private railway station – a marble building in the shadow of St Peter’s basilica – on a stretch of track that originates in a tunnel dug into the hillside beneath the Vatican Gardens. It travels along the 300-metre Vatican railway line – the shortest in the world – into Rome, then rumbles on to the Pope’s sumptuous Castel Gandolfo summer palace in the Alban hills south of the city.
[…] Tourism in the towns around the palace suffered when Pope Francis decided not to spend his summer there, and this decision to open it to the public has been interpreted as a helping hand […]
Source: The guardian
