Top 10 facts you didn't know about Vatican City
This is the infamous Vatican Post Office. This is a throwback photo of mine taken in 2011.
The Vatican post office has operated its own postal service and issued its own postage stamps since 1929. According to the Universal Postal Union, the Vatican post office is “one of the best postal systems in the world” and “more letters are sent each year, per inhabitant, from the Vatican’s 00120 postal code than from anywhere else in the world.”
As always I googled fun facts and found out 10 things you wouldn’t have known about the Vatican City (thanks to The Telegraph)
1) The Vatican City has the highest consumption of wine per capita, with an average resident drinking 54.26 litres of wine a year (the reason for this high level of consumption is because of large amounts participate during communion)
2) The city has the shortest rail network in the world, consisting of just two 300-metre tracks. It is primarily used for importing goods, and for symbolic reasons with non passenger train scheduled.
3) The Holy See attracts more tourists per resident than any other country
4) It has its own Euro, the Vatican & Italy signed an agreement in 2000 enabling the Holy See to adopt the euro as its official currency and to mint its own euro coins from 2002. Btw I still have those coins from my trip
5) The Pope has a personal army and I must say their uniform is criteria of joining the Holy See army must be a Catholic single male with Swiss city aged between 19 – 30. The uniform colours consist of bright shades of Blue, red, orange and yellow. The guards do use weapons btw.
6) Apparently it owns a Telescope in Arizona
7) It’s Post Office is among the World’s best.
8) You can’t get your passport stamped unfortunately believe I tried! But surprisingly I’ve managed to get from other smallest countries that I’ve visited my passport stamped (I’ve been to 4 out of 10 in the world)
9) It has citizens, but no-one is born in the country
10) It is the only country on UNESCO’s listings
So there you go top 10 facts about The Holy See
“It is not enough to say that we are Christians. We must live the faith, and not only with our words, but with our actions”
– Pope Francis –