http://www.economist.com/culture/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16004364&fsrc=rss.
The Vatican Secret Archives
Past papers
The Vatican turns a page—slowly
Apr 29th 2010 | ROME | From The Economist print edition
“NO UMBERTO ECO fan should go near the Tower of Winds: it could bring on sensory overload. Up a seemingly endless winding staircase is a room whose frescoes are alive with symbolism. The floor is sprinkled with signs of the zodiac and bisected by a line of white marble onto which a sun ray falls each day at noon. The so-called Meridian Hall, created to verify the accuracy of the calendar Pope Gregory XIII promulgated in 1582, is in the Vatican Secret Archives, which hold some 10m documents stored by the papacy over the past 1,200 years.
The name is a misleading anachronism that dates from when secret meant private (“secretary” has the same derivation). Some of the archives’ records have been published in scholarly texts. Most have been physically available to researchers since the late 19th century. But access has always been severely restricted.”
I’m excited, are you?
Art History Ramblings 