Apostolic Palace

The Apostolic Palace is the pope's official residence, a warren of over a thousand rooms beside Saint Peter's in the Vatican. Most of it is offices and private apartments, but its two most famous spaces are the reason millions file through each year, folded into the route of the Vatican Museums.

One is the Raphael Rooms, four reception halls that Pope Julius the Second handed to the young Raphael in 1508 to fresco, where the School of Athens gathers the philosophers of antiquity under a painted vault. The other, at the end of the walk, is the Sistine Chapel, its ceiling and altar wall covered by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1541, from the finger of God reaching toward Adam to the whirling Last Judgment.

The chapel is still a working place of worship, and it is here, sealed inside, that the cardinals lock themselves away to elect a new pope.