Vatican City Travel Forum

Hey everybody,
I need a favour. I am writing a graduate work about guard of Honor, so I would like to mention swiss guards. I need some info from tourist's view..
So, if anybody has any ideas, stories, links... it woould be very nice
Thanks in advance...Djordjije

Hi, Djordjije (I hope I spelled that right(!)) ;-)!

You can probably find the history of the Swiss Guards at www.wikipedia.org - I haven't looked, but they have everything else there...

If you look on my Rome page, you'll see a travelogue about Vatican City (at least, I think I put it on the Rome page and not the Vatican City page). The first picture is, I think, a photo of the gate through which I used to enter the Vatican when I had business there...it's a bit hard to see them, but there are two Swiss guards in their royal blue uniforms (not the brightly colored ones, which are worn on ceremonial occasions, not everyday). Everyone entering this gate has to show a pass to the two guards to get in.

If you go to my Castel Gandolfo page, you should see in one of the tips a photo of the wife and son of one of our school's teachers in front of the papal palace there, with two Swiss Guards in the background (the Pope was in residence then).

As you may know, the Swiss Guards are young men from a German-speaking canton in Switzerland. Not all of them speak very good Italian, so while the guards who are exposed to tourists normally speak decent Italian, when you are inside the Vatican, you can get a better response if you speak to them in German ;-).

Does this get you started?

Bill

Here are two excellent links that will give you information straight from the source:

www.vatican.va/roman_curia/swiss_guard/index.htm

www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ swiss_guard/swissguard/storia_en.htm

We recently had great celebrations as this year marked the 500th anniversary.
Enjoy all the great history you will find here.