Vatican Museums

The volume “Della Gran Galleria Vaticana. Journey through the restoration of the Gallery of Maps”, edited by Annavaleria Caffo in for Edizioni Musei Vaticani, in the dual Italian and English edition, proposes a journey within a journey.

The new publication, subject of the presentation on Tuesday 21 June at 04.00 p.m. in the Vatican Museums Conference Hall, will lead us not only to the discovery of the various Italian regions represented in the Gallery of Maps – the 120-metre long “beautiful walkway” requested in 1581 by Pope Gregory XIII – but will also introduce the guests present, and future readers, to the outcomes and results of the complex restoration intervention that has for four years involved the pictorial surface of the famous “corridor” that leads to the Sistine Chapel and which, in 2016, finally enabled visitors to admire once again “the wonder of green and blue” of the forty geographic panels.

The meeting will be introduced by the Secretary General of the Governorate, the Reverend Sr. Raffaella Petrini. The Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, also in the role of moderator, will introduce the intervention of the Director of the Department of Arts, Guido Cornini. This will be followed by the bibliographic contribution of Annavaleria Caffo, editor of the book and Head Assistant of the Department of XV-XVI Century Art, who will then hand over the floor - for the documentary and archival aspects - to Marta Bezzini, Director of the Historical Archive and Collections Registry of the Vatican Museums. The Vatican restorer Francesco Prantera, Director of the restoration site for the entire period, will close the presentation by illustrating the conservation problems faced and revealing some unpublished and curious details.