The Vatican flag and the history it carries

You’d spot the Vatican flag from across a room, yet very few people can tell you much about it. It’s one of the few things in the state that owes nothing to Michelangelo or Bernini, and I think it sums up the Vatican’s story rather neatly, pairing colours from 1808 with a country from 1929. Here’s what it looks like, where it comes from, what the law says about it and which other official symbols go with it. For the country as a whole, start with my Vatican City guide.

What it looks like, half by half

The flag is divided vertically into two halves. The one at the hoist is yellow and the one at the fly is white. On the white half sit two crossed keys with the papal tiara above them, which the state’s website calls by its Italian name, the Triregno.

Flag specialists describe it as square, like Switzerland’s, and the model drawing attached to the law shows it that way. The official website, however, never writes the proportion down in figures. My honest version is square according to its official drawing, with no text that explains it.

Why yellow and white?

This is the part I find most interesting. Yellow and white were adopted in 1808, taking over from an earlier pairing of yellow and red. In other words, when Vatican City was born in 1929 its colours had already been in use for 121 years. The flag wasn’t invented for the state. The state inherited a pair of colours and turned them into a national flag.

The official website doesn’t say why those two colours were chosen or what each one stands for, and I’m not going to plug the gap with a theory. Plenty of interpretations do the rounds, but none carries an official signature, and on a page that prides itself on sources I’d rather tell you that than a nice story.

When was the Vatican flag first raised?

On 8 June 1929, according to the Governorate. The date isn’t random. Cardinal Pietro Gasparri and Benito Mussolini put their names to the Lateran Pacts on 11 February 1929, and the ratifications were exchanged on 7 June, which is when the state began to exist in practice. The flag went up the following day. The stated aim of those pacts was to give the Holy See “absolute and visible” independence, and a flag of its own strikes me as the most literal way of making it visible. Some unofficial sources give 7 June as the adoption date, but the first raising, which is the date the state publishes, was the 8th.

If you want the before and after, it’s in the history of the Vatican, and why this really is a country, in is Vatican City a country?.

Coat of arms and seal, set down in law

The flag isn’t a matter of habit. The state’s Fundamental Law sets out the flag, the coat of arms and the seal with graphic models in its annexes, as the 2023 law already did. On 31 July 2026 Leo XIV issued a brand new Fundamental Law, replacing the previous one entirely, and article 24 keeps all three symbols. Article 1 of the same law restates that the Pope holds “the fullness of governing power”, so these are the symbols of a state whose head is the Pope himself.

For a traveller this has one small practical consequence. If a souvenir stall sells you a flag with different proportions or extra elements, it isn’t the official one. Where to shop with more confidence is in Vatican gift shops. The design that counts is the one in the annex.

An anthem older than the country

The anthem follows the same pattern as the colours, because it too predates the state. It’s the Pontifical March, or Pontifical Hymn, composed by Charles Gounod in 1869 and first performed on 11 April that year. Pius XII made it the official anthem on 16 October 1949, twenty years after the Lateran Pacts.

It has two sets of words. The Italian lyrics are by Monsignor Antonio Allegra and the Latin ones by Raffaello Lavagna, opening with “O felix Roma”.

Where to look for the state’s symbols on your visit

I haven’t found an official source listing which flagpoles fly the flag, so I won’t point you to a particular balcony. What I can point you to is where the state issues things in its own name. There are the stamps and postmark of Poste Vaticane, at the office in St Peter’s Square, and the Vatican euro coins, minted in Italy with a cap of one million euros a year, which I cover in Vatican post office and stamps.

And a tip for your photos. The Swiss Guard doesn’t wear the flag’s colours. Its dress uniform is blue, red and yellow, the traditional colours of the Medici, and was essentially designed by commander Jules Repond in the early twentieth century. If anyone tells you Michelangelo drew it, the Guard itself says that’s a myth.