Why Vatican City Has a National Railway

From It's History

Vatican City is smaller than most American golf courses — yet buried inside its ancient walls is a fully functioning national railway. When Italy and the Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty in 1929, a clause buried in Article 6 required Italy to build the Holy See its own rail connection to the national network. The reason was not ceremonial: a state that cannot receive goods without crossing its neighbour's territory is not truly independent, and Vatican City, with no farmland or industry, depended entirely on Italy for everything. What followed was one of the most complex feats of precision engineering of its era — a purpose-built viaduct decorated with Fascist emblems, a station clad in white travertine marble designed by the architect of the Vatican Museums' famous spiral staircase, and a 53-foot iron gate that takes nearly a minute to slide open in the ancient stone wall. For decades, one man ran the entire operation single-handed, averaging one freight train per day. Today the line still runs — though mostly as a Saturday tourist service. This is the story of the world's most expensive railway per foot of track, and why it was worth every lira.