Gallery of Maps, Geographical museum in Vatican Museums, Vatican City

The Gallery of Maps is a long corridor in the Vatican Museums lined with large-scale wall paintings of Italian territories. The walls display painted maps on both sides, while the vaulted ceiling features golden stuccowork and allegorical scenes.

Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Dominican friar Ignazio Danti to design these geographical representations, completed between 1580 and 1583. The project aimed to document knowledge of Italian territories and symbolically reinforce papal authority over these regions.

The gallery's name comes from its forty painted maps, arranged so that walking through it means travelling along the Apennines: the Adriatic regions on the right wall, the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian ones on the left. Pope Gregory XIII's contemporaries described it as the place where the pope could stroll through Italy without leaving the palace. The ceiling pairs each region with religious events that took place there.

The corridor lies on the route to the Sistine Chapel and can be crowded with large visitor groups, so early morning or late afternoon visits work best. The length of the space allows you to linger at less busy spots and examine details more closely.

The gallery once displayed the Azuchi Screens, a set of Japanese folding screens depicting Kyoto and its castle, given by shogun Oda Nobunaga to Pope Gregory XIII in 1585. The ceiling frescoes by Antonio Tempesta and others pair each region's map with a religious event that took place there.