Porta Sant'Anna and the Swiss Guard
Why is it significant?
Watch the gate for a minute: delivery vans, cars with Vatican number plates, priests on bicycles, office workers with passes on lanyards, and at the entrance young men of the Swiss Guard checking who goes in. This is Porta Sant'Anna, the working entrance to the smallest state in the world.
Key Facts
| Place | Porta Sant'Anna and the Swiss Guard |
|---|---|
| Address | Via di Porta Angelica, 00120 Città del Vaticano |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90400, 12.45760 |
| Part of Walk | Pilgrims, Popes and Swiss Guards: Rome's Vatican and the Medieval Borgo |
| Generated | Generated |
Watch the gate for a minute: delivery vans, cars with Vatican number plates, priests on bicycles, office workers with passes on lanyards, and at the entrance young men of the Swiss Guard checking who goes in. This is Porta Sant'Anna, the working entrance to the smallest state in the world.
Vatican City covers less than half a square kilometre and has only a few hundred citizens. It was born on 11 February 1929 with the Lateran Pacts, and behind these walls it has its own post office, its own pharmacy, its own railway station, and its own army, one of the oldest military units in continuous service anywhere. Just inside the gate stands the little church of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri, the parish church of the Vatican, which gives the gate its name.
The Pontifical Swiss Guard was founded in 1506, when Pope Julius the Second hired Swiss soldiers, then the most feared infantry in Europe. Their great test came on 6 May 1527, during the Sack of Rome. While Clement the Seventh fled along the Passetto, the guards made a stand near St Peter's. Of about one hundred and eighty-nine men, one hundred and forty-seven were killed, among them their commander; the survivors escorted the pope to safety. Ever since, new recruits swear their oath on 6 May.
They must be Swiss, Catholic, unmarried when they join, and at least one metre seventy-four tall. And their famous striped uniform, whatever you may have been told, was not designed by Michelangelo. The version you see dates from the early twentieth century, the work of a commander named Jules Repond, who studied Renaissance paintings, Raphael's frescoes among them, for inspiration.
The colours, blue, yellow and red, are usually read as a tribute to the della Rovere family of Julius the Second and to the Medici. Five centuries of loyalty in three stripes. Now follow the Vatican walls north to the busy square beyond and round the corner onto Viale Vaticano. They lead to the last gate of this walk.