Vatican Museums

A new handy guidebook, leading us inside the Vatican Gardens, a place among the most prestigious ones, which extends for about half of the Vatican City State.
After an historical introduction, describing the birth and the development of the Gardens, five itineraries are presented, each one introduced by a detailed map and enriched by beautiful colour images. Every step is illustrated from the historical, religious and artistic point of view: along the way we meet sculptures donated to the Popes over the centuries, monuments and memorials, magnificent fountains, niches and mosaics, steles, towers and ancient walls, and everything is surrounded by rare plants and flowers from all over the world, formal gardens and wooded areas.

Among the most interesting places, the reproduction of the Grotto of Lourdes, the Chinese Pavilion, the fragment of the Berlin Wall, and the Fountain of the Aquilone are illustrated.
At the end of the book, an useful botanical appendix, also provided with suggestive images, describes every species of tree, plant or flower of the Vatican Gardens both from the scientific and the symbolic-religious point of view.