LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Vatican: Vatican Library
built 294 days ago
The Vatican City is itself of great cultural significance. Buildings such as St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel are home to some of the most famous art in the world, which includes works by artists such as Botticelli, Bernini and Michelangelo. The Vatican Library and the collections of the Vatican Museums are of the highest historical, scientific and cultural importance. In 1984, the Vatican was added by UNESCO to the List of World Heritage Sites; it is the only one to consist of an entire state. Furthermore, it is the only site to date registered with the UNESCO as a centre containing monuments in the "International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection" according to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
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The Vatican palaces are an irregular mass of three-story and four-story buildings, built on long, plain lines and broken by additions and alterations. The papal residence and offices occupy the portion near the colonnade, and the rest is given over to museums and the Vatican Library. The Vatican museums are among the most important in the world; they are the Museo Pio-Clementino, founded in the 18th cent. and containing one of the world's great collections of antiquities; the Chiaramonti Museum, founded in the early 19th cent. and holding a collection of Greek sculptures and Renaissance imitations; the Braccio Nuovo, considered by many to be the most beautiful of all the museums; the Egyptian Museum and the Etruscan Museum, opposite the Braccio Nuovo; and the Pinacoteca Vaticana (opened in 1932), which contains paintings by Giotto, Guercino, Caravaggio, Poussin, and others.
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The Vatican City has one of the biggest and most beautiful art collections in the world, which includes works by artists such as Michelangelo Buonarotti and Leonardo da Vinci. It ... has a large and valuable library.
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The Vatican promotes the study of science and mathematics through the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which dates from 1603. The Vatican Observatory was begun by Pope Gregory XIII. It has modern instruments, an astrophysics laboratory, and a 33,000-volume library.
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The Vatican contains an abundance of works of art, which are now catalogued in every tourist's guide-book. On the one hand are museums and collections and on the other the interior decoration of the palace. The Vatican treasures of art ... include much of scientific importance, which will be treated in the following section. Here belong especially the rich treasures exhibited in the library and various other objects. The Vatican works of art represent in their entirety an irreplaceable treasure, which is not actively at the disposal of the Curia, but passively in their possession, since the repair and maintenance of these objects make great claims on the resources of the Holy See. Those who proclaim the riches of the Curia should know that, though the works of art are worth many hundred millions, they have no market value.
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The other major edifice is the Palace of the Vatican... known as the Papal Palace. It is a complex of buildings that contains more than 1,000 rooms and houses the papal apartments, the government offices of the Roman Catholic church, several chapels and museums, and a library.
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Vatican Library