The geography of Vatican City is unique due to the country's position as an urban, landlocked enclave of Rome, Italy. With an area of 0.17 sq mi (0.44 km2), it is the world's smallest independent state. Outside the Vatican City, thirteen buildings in Rome and Castel Gandolfo (the pope's summer residence) enjoy extraterritorial rights. (One building, the Paul VI Audience Hall, straddles the border, but its Italian portion has extraterritorial rights.) The country contains no major natural resources, and no known natural hazards other than those that affect Rome in general, such as earthquakes.
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Famous quotes containing the words geography of, geography and/or city:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men:
And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)