THE VATICAN 
GARDENS, 
ROME. 
LTHOUGH the Vatican hill was not. sur- 
rounded with walls until the ninth century, 
the ground now occupied by the gardens 
has been a sacred spot from _ prehistoric 
times. The earliest legends speak of it as the abode 
of a god. It was the fourteenth of the fourteen 
regions into which Augustus divided the city. 
Gardens such as those of Agrippina, and the still 
more famous ones of Domitian, were situated here. 
Here was the circus of Caligula, which was rendered 
conspicuous by the lofty obelisk which now adorns 
the Piazza of St. Peter, the one obelisk which enjoys 
the distinction of never having been levelled to the 
ground, and which towered over the spina of the 
circus. Here was the sepulchre of Scipio, the 
young destroyer of Carthage, and that of Honorius 
and his wife Maria, daughter of Stilicho, the last 
great Roman general. Here stood a temple dedicated 
by Nero to the memory of Romulus, one to Mars, 
and one to Apollo. Pliny speaks of them, and all 
ancient writers concur that they were the most 
sublime of edifices. 
s time wore on, this part of outlying Rome 
was deserted, and shar ah the general decay. Writers 
in the eighth century cieeics the Vaticanum 
as ‘the ae eeable fields,” from the superstitious 
and licentious rites carried on there, and from its 
generally evil reputation. In 848, when Leo IV. 
was Pope, the dreaded Saracens appeared for the 
second time at Ostia, when a battle and a great 
storm led to their confusion and defeat, and numbers 
of slaves were brought to Rome and set to labour 
at restoring the walls. Leo’s most celebrated under- 
taking was the fortification of the Vatican district, 
an event in the history of the city, for out of 
this fortification the Civitas Leonina, or Leonine 
City, arose, a new quarter of Rome, and a new 
fortress destined to be of great importance in later 
centuries. 
At the time that Aurelian had enclosed the 
city with walls, the necessity for including the 
Vatican had not arisen, and it remained open and 
outside the city. Even after the building of 
St. Peter’s, and after convents, hospitals, and deel 
ings had grown up round it, the necessity for 
building walls for its protection had not occurred 
to any Pope till the time of Leo III, He began 
to build, and had he carried out his idea, the sack 
of the basilica by the Saracens could never have 
taken place. The work had been suspended, and 
the materials of the partially constructed walls had 
been carried off again for other purposes. Leo IV. 
revived the project, and, with the help of the 
Emperor Lothar, worked hard to carry it out. He 
distributed the expense so that every town in the 
ecclesiastical state, the convents, and all the domains 
of the Church hore a part. 
The walls were begun in 848 and finished in 
852. They stretched from Hadrian’s Mausoleum, 
up the Vatican hill, then making a bend, crossed 
the hill and came straight down the other side. 
They were nearly 4oft. in height, and were 
defended by forty-four strong towers. One of these 
strong round corner towers still stands on the top 
of the Vatican hill, and is called the Saracens’ 
Tower. ‘The line of Leo’s walls may still be traced 
along almost their entire route. For centuries Rome 
ad witnessed no such festival as that which on 
June 27th, 852, celebrated the dedication of the 
Leonine City. The entire clergy, barefoot, their 
heads strewn with ashes, walked in procession 
singing round the walls. Before them went the 
seven Cardinal-Bishops, who sprinkled the walls 
with holy water. At each gate the procession 
halted, and each time the Pope invoked blessings 
on the new quarter. The circuit ended, he dis- 
tributed gifts of gold and silver and silken palliums 
among the nobles, the populace, and the colony of 
foreigners. The walls were afterwards rebuilt by 
Pius IV., in the sixteenth century, and the earlier 
fortifications were almost entirely obliterated. 
It was Sixtus IV., the Pope to whom we owe 
the Sistine Chapel, who first laid out the grounds 
extending up the hill as the gardens of the Vatican. 
The taste for gardens was just reviving, and the 
building of medieval castles was giving way tu that 
of fascinating and luxurious villas; and as Pope 
Sixtus created the garden, it remains in great 
measure to-day. It has been enlarged from time 
to time, and in 1845 the grounds of the Hospital 
di San Spirito, a religious institution dating from 
the eighth century, were absorbed. A piece of the 
facade of the Hospital, with its double cross, still 
stands against the walls. Pius IX. laid out the 
