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)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)