The Vatican post office, its stamps and the postmark that does exist

One of the oddest things people search for about the Vatican has nothing to do with art or faith. It’s paperwork. Lots of visitors want to come home with a Vatican stamp in their passport, and that stamp doesn’t exist. What does exist, and makes a far better souvenir in my view, is a postal service of its own, with its own stamps and postmark. Here’s where the offices are, what you can send, what I couldn’t confirm and where the Vatican’s coins fit in.

Where to find the Vatican post offices

Poste Vaticane has two offices that are genuinely useful to a visitor. The first is in St Peter’s Square, in the left-hand arc of the colonnade as you face the basilica. It’s a small accessible wooden building that opened on 19 December 2024 for the Jubilee, replacing the mobile unit that had worked there since 20 December 2010. It opens every day, Sundays included, from 08:30 to 18:30.

The second is inside the Vatican Museums, next to the Cortile delle Corazze, Monday to Saturday on the same hours. You only reach it with a museum ticket, so it’s for people already on the route.

There’s a third with more character. On the basilica’s roof terrace, at the foot of the dome of St Peter’s, a post office shares the space with toilets, a café and a shop of religious items. I compare that shop with the others in Vatican gift shops. You need a dome ticket to get there, and the official site gives it no separate opening hours.

The official directory lists further offices, such as the Posta Centrale, open Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 18:45 and on Saturdays from 08:00 to 13:30, and one at the Lateran University, out in Rome, on reduced hours. As a traveller, I’d stick to the first two.

Where to buy Vatican stamps

At any of those offices. The one in the museums is the best stocked by its own account, selling stamps, sending postcards and registered letters and offering philatelic products such as folders and souvenir covers. Inside the museum there are also old post boxes still in use, and posting your card in one of them makes a nice ending to the visit.

What I can’t give you is a price. Poste Vaticane doesn’t publish one on the pages I’ve checked, and it doesn’t say which payment methods its offices take either. I’d carry a bit of cash just in case, even if it’s only for a postcard.

A postcard with the Vatican postmark, my favourite souvenir

I think it’s the best souvenir from the Vatican for a simple reason. It’s issued by the state, not by a shop. You can buy something with the dome on it from any shop in Borgo, but only Poste Vaticane can frank your card, and it arrives home carrying the 00120 Città del Vaticano postcode.

My plan would be to buy the card and stamp in the square at the end of the day, write it without rushing and post it before 18:30. If you’re climbing the dome, you can do it up on the terrace instead.

There’s one detail I couldn’t pin down. Many guides repeat that Vatican stamps only work for post dropped into Vatican boxes and offices. I haven’t found that on the Poste Vaticane website, so I won’t state it as fact, but I wouldn’t risk posting the card in a Rome post box.

The passport stamp, a myth with a logic to it

The myth grows from a reasonable idea. If the Vatican is a country, there must be a border, and if there’s a border, there must be a stamp. But nobody checks anything at the line between Rome and the Vatican, and no official website, whether Poste Vaticane, the Governorate or the museums, offers to stamp passports. The traveller accounts I’ve read say the same.

So what you’re asked for on the way in is something else, photo ID alongside your museum ticket if you booked it online. How a state works without customs, and who holds a Vatican passport, is covered in is Vatican City a country?. And if anyone offers you an “official stamp” for your passport in exchange for money, it isn’t a state service, and the local tricks are gathered in Vatican scams to avoid.

Vatican coins for collectors

The Vatican has no currency of its own, it uses the euro, but it does issue its own euro coins. The current monetary agreement with the European Union was signed on 17 December 2009 and has been in force since 1 January 2010. The coins are minted in Italy, at the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, capped at one million euros a year. Every one of them except the gold and silver issues can be spent in Italy. Gold coins came back in 1996, in the run-up to the 2000 Jubilee, having previously been struck from 1929 to 1959.

With a cap like that, I wouldn’t be surprised never to see one in my change after a coffee. I haven’t found an official sales point for collectors in the sources I’ve checked, so I won’t send you to any shop. The practical side of paying at the Vatican, cards and cash included, you’ll find in my guide to money and payments.