Lentorama 2026: Hic es: aedificia Vaticani

Day 5 - Palace of the Governate, Via Paolo 29

This palace is the home to the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, which is the legislative body of the Vatican. Who is with me in just learning that the Vatican has a legislature?

It is, not surprisingly, very different from your typical legislature. The legislature is made up of a president and six cardinals, all of whom are appointed to five year terms by the pope. The president is also the de facto head of government, akin to the president's role in a parliamentary system. Up until the current pope the president was also a cardinal, but Leo rewrote the terms of office to allow for non-cardinals to serve as president, and then went and made Sister Raffaella Petrini the president. She is, needless to say, the first woman to hold the position.

Any legislation passed by the commission gets passed to the pope via the Secretariat of State prior to being made public. 

The commission oversees a variety of offices, from the post office to the tourism board to the department of economic services. How much overseeing they actually do I don't know.

As for the actual building, it appears to have been purpose-built for the commission during the late 1920s and early '30s. The architect, Giuseppe Momo, is best known for the spiral staircase in the Vatican Museums.