Month: April 2026

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The Vatican Grottoes

For me, the Vatican Grottoes are one of the most interesting parts of Vatican City. From St. Peter’s Basilica, you can enter through the stairs in front of the central altar, as well as the stairs in the four large columns around it.

There are mainly two things in the grottoes: tombs and chapels. The tombs are mostly those of former popes, but you’ve also got a cardinal, a queen of Cyprus, and a few others down there. A lot of the chapels are dedicated to nations, specifically: Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Mexico. I’m not sure what it takes to get your country a chapel in the Vatican Grottoes, but it must be pretty difficult if Italy didn’t make the cut. I’m just saying, they’re pretty Catholic and they’re literally across the street.

Below the grottoes, there’s one more level: the Necropolis. This is a group of ancient Roman tombs that were rediscovered in the 1940s. This will be the next part of the Vatican I’ll be drawing.

Before that, however, I’ll be drawing the next Cartographic Congress winner, an infernal fortress that guards the banks of the River Styx, with watchtowers overlooking the river and lots of rusty, bloody bulwarks, cages, etc. So, that’s certainly something to draw in between maps of the Vatican, haha. Well, I’m gonna get started on that. Let me know what you think of the grottoes!

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Vatican Grottoes (Work-in-Progress)

The Vatican Grottoes are mostly finished, but I’ve still got a bit more coloring to do. I wanted to show it to you now because, unfortunately, I’ve got a family emergency and I’m going to be away for a week to deal with it. I should be able to get this finished shortly after I get back.

All right, I’ve got to pack some things, so I’ll leave it at that. Be back soon.

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Templemore Village

Here’s the finished village of Templemore, built on the ruins of a great, ancient temple. My story about the place is that the temple was dedicated to a long-forgotten goddess of luck. While the residents don’t worship her (or even know who she is), she bestows her blessing of good fortune upon them nonetheless. So if the players show up at the tavern and start gambling with the old fellas at the corner table, things are likely to go very poorly for them.

There are variations of that story that could be fun, too. If you change the goddess and the blessing, there are a lot of potentially interesting scenarios that could become the seed for an adventure. Like, what if it’s the goddess of time and she stops the residents from aging. Or what if it’s the goddess of death and everyone rises from the dead after they die. Or what if the goddess is angry that they’re here and curses them instead. There are a lot of ways you could go with it if you want to get creative.

Next up, I’ll be drawing the Vatican Grottoes underneath St. Peter’s Basilica. These are a series of tunnels, chapels and tombs, including the tomb of St. Peter himself. This won’t take nearly as long as the main floor of the Basilica itself, but, as you can see in this picture, they went pretty hard on both the floors and the statuary, so it’ll take a bit longer than it would have if the Vatican had hired a cheaper contractor. Also, I want to add that I love statues of animals by sculptors who’ve never seen that animal in real life and the lions in that picture are a great example.

Anyway, I think that’s about it. I hope you like the map. Let me know what you think!

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Village in a Ruined Temple (Work-in-Progress)

This is the village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure that I mentioned earlier. I considered a few options for what the megastructure might be, but I ended up going with a huge temple to some ancient goddess. The thick walls are the original walls of the temple and the thinner walls are the houses built within the shell of the old ruin, probably using the rubble as building material. A garden in the atrium has been repurposed for crops and the reflecting pool of an old, broken fountain is used as a cistern.

Anyway, I’ll be coloring this for the next few days. Let me know what you think so far!