Article 460 words Level: all audiences This brief 2009 article, written by John Norton and published in Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, provides a short introduction to the Vatican Observatory. Sneaking a visit inside the Vatican Observatory The Church played a significant role in the advance of astronomy. John Norton OSV Newsweekly I spent Christmas 1989 with two college friends in Castel Gandolfo, a small town outside Rome best known as the site of the pope’s summer residence — and, less so, as the headquarters of the Vatican Observatory. We ended up there because a friend knew a family named the Buccis who owned a small and very inexpensive hotel in Castel Gandolfo. So there we set up camp for two weeks, making daily forays by train into Rome, and drawn back each night by Mama Bucci’s cooking. Twenty years on, I still get hungry at the thought of her white lasagna. Another regular mouth at Mama Bucci’s table belonged to … Continue reading →

Article 3800 words Level: all audiences This is the English text of an article by Br. Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory, that was published in La Civiltà Cattolica in 2019 which in turn was based on a paper presented to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in November 2016 and published in Science and Sustainability: Impacts of Scientific Knowledge and Technology on Human Society and Its Environment. Click here for the version published in La Civiltà Cattolica. Click here for the Science and Sustainability presentation. [Click here to download PDF]  

Book 100 pages Level: all audiences In the 1990s, the artist John David Mooney visited the Vatican Observatory and created a number of temporary art installations (click here for a sampling of these) that are shown in this coffee-table book entitled The Vatican Observatory and the Arts: The Sculpture of John David Mooney at Castel Gandolfo, now available from the University of Notre Dame Press. A book about art is not the unusual undertaking that it might seem for the Vatican Observatory. As a scientific research institute of the Church it is dedicated to research in astrophysics and cosmology. But it has also over the past decade or so ventured into areas of interdisciplinary interest. Such adventuresome efforts are actually deeply rooted in the Observatory’s traditions which can be traced back to the Tower of the Winds, a sixteenth-century monument to both art and science, that arises above the Vatican Museums in Rome. There we find beautiful frescoes depicting the four … Continue reading →

Article 6 pages Level: all audiences This article from the May 2000 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine discusses the Vatican Observatory and in particular the Vatican Observatory Summer School (or VOSS) program. THE SMALL, PICTURESQUE TOWN of Castel Gandolfo lies 25 kilometers southeast of Rome. Sitting on top of a ridge 500 meters above sea level, it overlooks the tranquil, greenish blue Lake Albano, formed by the collapse of an ancient volcanic crater. The town’s narrow, cobbled main street leads past little cafes, souvenir shops, and a beautiful church and fountain designed by the 17th-century Italian artist Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. Finally you come to a four-story ocher edifice with small shuttered windows and a pair of massive wooden doors–the Pontifical Palace of the Roman Catholic Church. Officially a part of Vatican City, this is where Pope John Paul II spends the summer months to escape Rome’s oppressive heat and humidity. It is also the headquarters of Vatican Observatory. Every … Continue reading →