The Lateran Treaty: How Vatican City Was Created

Vatican City is younger than the Empire State Building — it's a 20th-century country.

Ending the “Roman Question”

For almost 60 years after Italy annexed the Papal States in 1870, the pope refused to recognize the loss, calling himself a “prisoner in the Vatican.” The dispute, known as the Roman Question, went unresolved through six decades and multiple popes.

Three agreements in one

Signed on 11 February 1929 by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri for Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini for the Kingdom of Italy, the Lateran Treaty was really three documents at once: a political treaty creating Vatican City as sovereign territory, a Concordat governing Church-state relations across Italy, and a financial settlement compensating the Holy See for the territory it had lost.

A country of 44 hectares

The treaty defined Vatican City's borders at just 44 hectares (about 0.17 square miles) — smaller than most city parks — making it, on ratification in June 1929, the smallest sovereign state in the world, a title it still holds.