Pietro Zander, La Necropoli di San Pietro

Arte e fede nei sotterranei della Basilica Vaticana

We are moving quickly toward the opening of the Holy Year 2025 and several initiatives are preparing or supporting it. We are therefore pleased to welcome the presentation of Pietro Zander's volume, La Necropoli di San Pietro. Art and Faith in the Underground of the Vatican Basilica, in its second revised and expanded edition (2024), first published in Italian in 2014 and translated into English thanks to the contribution of the Knights of Columbus.

 A scholarly work that can help and accompany many people as they prepare for the Jubilee pilgrimage ad limina Petri. A very thorough study, in the space allowed by the format, a sure reference for the scientific community and a tool for disseminators of culture and those in charge of the media. A scientific text that does not repel the reader but, on the contrary, attracts him.

And it is precisely to a Holy Year that is linked the history of the Vatican Necropolis, which, together with the Sacred Vatican Grottoes, as they were then called, with some nostalgia for the term 'sacred,' were opened and made available to the faithful and pilgrims for the first time in the Holy Year of 1950, called by Pope Pius XII.