✨Vatican Museums. Measuring 120 metres long and 6 metres wide, the Map Gallery owes its name to the 40 maps depicting the territories and possessions of Italy belonging to the Church that Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572-1585) wanted to depict on its walls, with the aim of reproducing the entire peninsula to scale. Built by Mascarino between 1578 and 1580, the Gallery was decorated in just over a year by a team of artists led by Girolamo Muziano and Cesare Nebbia, while the iconographic proje