Category: Vatican City

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St. Peter’s Basilica – The Reliquary Lodges

This is the last part of St. Peter’s Basilica, which means all that’s left to draw is… *checks notes* everything else in Vatican City. Not a problem.

These small rooms were built into the large columns around the basilica’s main dome, each with it’s own balcony. Here’s a photo. Each one contains a notable relic: the True Cross, the Spear of Longinus (aka the Spear of Destiny), St. Veronica’s Veil, and the Head of St. Andrew. Here’s a picture of the spear, which is kept in a crystal vase. And here’s a picture of the Head of St. Andrew, which is kept in a container that I think we can all agree is very head-shaped and very normal.

The next map of the Vatican will be the sacristy, since it’s adjacent to the basilica, but first, I’ll be drawing the map chosen by last month’s Cartographic Congress: a village built inside the ruins of a huge amphitheater similar to the Colosseum. I’m thinking of circular tiers of houses around the sides, a market in the center, Maybe some sewers, cisterns and shady stuff in the underworks.

I’m pretty into this idea and I expect it to be a fairly large map. Not quite a megaproject, but a lot bigger than Templemore Village, which was a similar sort of idea. Anyway, if you’ve got any suggestions or interesting ideas about it, by all means let me know. I’ll be back once I’ve got something to show you. Until then!

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The Vatican Necropolis

There’s an insane story about the Vatican Necropolis that I read while doing research for this map and I’d like to share it with you.

So, St. Peter’s Basilica was said to have been built directly over the grave of St. Peter, the first pope. His grave was well below the basilica, however, and was not accessible.

Then, in the 1940s, Pope Pius XII decided he wanted to open the Vatican Grottoes to tourists. There was a problem, though: the ceilings were too low. They couldn’t be raised because there was a basilica on top of them, so the floor had to be lowered. Workers were sent in to dig every room two feet deeper and put in new floors. And, in the middle of this, one of them broke through to something below.

The ancient, Roman tombs they found were considered likely to contain the tomb of St. Peter, so the pope sent a group of archaeologists to get in there and archaeologize the place. A priest named Ludwig Kaas, who had no education or experience in archaeology, was assigned to oversee the excavation.

Eventually, an archaeologist named Dr. Margherita Guarducci found St. Peter’s tomb. It was directly under the central altar of the basilica, it was lined with marble and there was graffiti that said it was him. Bingo. The only problem was that there were no bones inside. Dr. Guarducci wondered why they were moved and where they might be now. They started testing bones from the necropolis. Is this St. Peter? No, that’s a woman. How about this? No, that’s a teenager. This? That’s a sheep.

Ten years later, while talking to one of the basilica’s maintenance guys, Dr. Guarducci found out where the bones went. Apparently, Father Kaas had been going into the dig site at night, taking out any bones he found and putting them in boxes. Without telling anyone. They’d been in a storeroom for a decade and Father Kaas never said anything. For ten years, he watched people search the necropolis, test remains and painstakingly examine the site for clues about where St. Peter’s bones might be. And this dude said absolutely nothing. And then he died.

And that’s how the bones of St. Peter were discovered by archaeologists. In a box in a closet.

Next, I’ll be drawing a castle sitting over an elaborate cave system, containing a meeting place for the local thieves’ guild. It should be a useful map for adventures where the players are going somewhere that’s normal on the outside, but shady on the inside. Secret gangs, cults, conspiracies and so on. Have you seen Hot Fuzz? That sort of thing.

After that, I’ll be drawing the last part of St. Peter’s Basilica, which is the reliquary lodges. They’re small and won’t take more than a couple days.

All right, that’s about it. Let me know what you think!

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Vatican Necropolis (Work-in-Progress)

The Roman Necropolis is a lot less well-documented than the rest of St. Peter’s Basilica, mostly due to the very limited amount of tourism they allow there. So, while I’d normally be able to search for any other part of the basilica and find 11 billion photos from every conceivable angle, I’ve had to do some serious digging to find out what’s in some parts of this place.

Anyway, I’m coloring this now and I should have it done in a few more days. Until then!

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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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St. Peter’s Basilica: Roof Level

Here’s another part of St. Peter’s Basilica finished. We’ve still got the grottoes and the Roman necropolis left to draw. And, of course, the rest of Vatican City. For reasons I explained here, I’ll be drawing in the backgrounds and surrounding buildings later. In the meantime, I hope the lack of surroundings doesn’t impede anyone’s ability to run adventures in the land of Catholicism.

By the way, I’m not planning to draw the roof levels of every building in the Vatican. I decided to draw this one because:

  1. There are numerous stairs to the roof.
  2. It’s a cool roof.
  3. The basilica is kind of the centerpiece of the Vatican.

But, like, I don’t think we need a map for the roof of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. If there’s another roof that’s worth drawing, I’ll draw it, but I’ll probably skip it for most places.

Next, I’ll be drawing last month’s Cartographic Congress winner, which is a medieval village built in the ruins of an ancient megastructure. I haven’t decided on the megastructure that the village is built on just yet, but it could be an ancient temple, a huge amphitheater or something like that. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Let me know what you think!

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St. Peter’s Basilica Roof (Work-in-Progress)

Here are the lines for the roof of the St. Peter’s Basilica map. It’s probably a little hard to parse what you’re looking at here, especially since this roof– very unusually– has a number of features that are recessed into the roof (as seen here, on the right). Plenty of roofs have things sticking out, but recesses are pretty rare, since they tend to fill up with water. I’m not sure how they avoided that here, but they seem to have worked something out.

Anyway, I’m gonna get to work on coloring this tomorrow. At the moment, I am incredibly sick and I’m going to give my disease-ridden body a day to rest. All right, I’m going to go lie down.

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St. Peter’s Basilica – Annotated Version

As soon as I posted the basilica, I realized I had completely forgotten to make an annotated version, so here it is.

I only labeled the things I thought would be most relevant to people, but if you want to know more detailed information on every single altar and monument, let me direct you here. Also, hats off to whoever created that website, because this map would have been substantially less accurate without it.

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St. Peter’s Basilica

St. Peter’s Basilica is finished. Well, provisionally finished. I really do hate posting the map without the background and surrounding buildings, but it’s necessary for now and I want to explain why.

Since I’m drawing all of Vatican City, I will eventually draw each building, but I need to draw them separately, because, in my experience, drawing part of a building is a good way to end up redrawing it later. And the map above includes not only the basilica, but part of the sacristy, the Apostolic Palace and a tiny bit of the Sistine Chapel. So I need to finish those first, then add them to this map, then draw in the background around them. In the long run, this is what gets Vatican City done faster and I hope everyone is okay with that.

Next up, I’ll be drawing a map of Mesa Verde, an ancient Native American settlement carved into a cliffside in the Rocky Mountains. I’ll try to draw it as it was when it was occupied, which I should be able to do, since archaeologists seem to have figured out what most of the buildings were for.

Anyway, I hope you like the basilica and I promise you that the surroundings will be drawn in eventually. I gave the map a lot of extra love and I hope you feel it was worth the time and effort. Either way, let me know what you think!

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St. Peter’s Basilica: Here’s where things are at right now.

There’s still a fair bit of floor left to color, but we’re getting there. I’ve been so engrossed in this that there have been a few times where I’ve started working, then looked up and, oh, hey, it’s five in the morning. Something about this really puts me in the zone.

Anyway, I’m gonna get back to it. Hope you like it so far!

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St. Peter’s Basilica: The floors are finished.

The lines for the basilica are finally done: the walls, the statues, the furnishings, the floors and all the rest. It was an enormous amount of work, but I think it’s been worthwhile. I might even say the map is looking fairly… is Catholicious a word? I hope so.

Anyway, it’s time to color this thing. It’ll probably take a minute, so I’ll post a few pictures along the way. Well, I’m gonna get started on that. Let me know what you think so far!