Page:How to See the Vatican, Sladen, 1914.djvu/56



WHAT THE VATICAN CONSISTS OF

[The numbers in brackets refer to Plan]

Vatican, says Hare, in his Walks in Rome, is the largest palace in the world. He gives its measurements as one thousand one hundred and fifty-one English feet long, and seven hundred and sixty-seven broad. These measurements are, with slight variations, repeated in other guide-books, with the exception that in Baedeker's Central Italy it is further stated that the total extent covered by the palace is thirteen and a half acres, while in Baedeker's Paris it is stated that the Louvre and the fragment of the Tuileries together cover forty-eight acres. And in any case you have to ask to what these measurements of length and breadth refer. From the left-hand edge of the Sistine Chapel to the extreme point of the Sculpture Museum, built out of Innocent's Villa Belvedere, the length must be very much greater than eleven hundred and fifty-one feet. For the long Gallery of the 14