Vatican City

(Local Name: Città del Vaticano) The extensive territories of the Papal States in central Italy, originally presented to the Pope by the Frankish king Pippin the Short, father of Charlemagne, were incorporated in the new kingdom of Italy in 1870. The Pope thereafter regarded himself as a prisoner in the Vatican, and this rift between Church and State was not finally healed until 1929, when Mussolini concluded the Lateran Treaty with the Holy See under which the Pope gained full sovereignty over the more restricted territory of the Vatican State.