The Vatican railway station, where trains almost never leave

A country of 0.44 km² with its own railway station sounds like a pub quiz trick, and it isn’t one. It has one, Italy built it because it had to, and a train almost never leaves it. Here’s why it exists, what it’s like according to the Holy See’s own records, what happened to the Castel Gandolfo train and which station is actually useful if you’re arriving by rail.

A station the Lateran Treaty demanded

It all goes back to the treaty that created the state in 1929. Article 6 obliged Italy to build a station inside Vatican City and connect it to the Italian network at the neighbouring Roma San Pietro station. Work began on 3 April 1929, the first test locomotive rolled in during March 1932 and the official handover to the Vatican took place on 2 October 1934.

The line is short but took some serious engineering. It leaves the far end of Roma San Pietro, crosses the Gelsomino valley on an eight-arch viaduct 143 metres long, passes over Via Gregorio VII and Via Aurelia, crosses Viale Vaticano and enters the state through an arch cut into the walls. That arch is closed by a sliding iron gate weighing 35,500 kg, which takes about a minute to open. Between the Roma San Pietro building and the Vatican one there are 624.25 metres.

What it’s like inside, according to the Holy See

The passenger building was designed by Giuseppe Momo, Pius XI’s trusted architect, and opened in 1933. It measures 61 by 21.50 metres, is faced in travertine and has a grand hall with a coloured marble floor, a coffered ceiling and eight cipollino columns that are purely decorative, because concrete beams carry the load. The sculptures on the front, with Pius XI’s coat of arms between figures of Thought and Action, are by Eduardo Rubino.

Seeing the work being finished, Pius XI declared it the most beautiful station in the world. The twist is that he never travelled by train. The first pope to use it was John XXIII, on 4 October 1962, on his way to Loreto and Assisi aboard the Italian presidential train, and John Paul II used it in 1979 and 2002. The Vatican has no railway staff and no trains of its own, and the papal train being prepared in 1932 was never built. In practice it mostly handled goods, and by 2001 the Holy See was already describing that traffic as close to nothing.

Can you visit the Vatican railway station?

Not on your own. It’s inside the state, near the Governorate Palace and outside the areas open to the public, and no official visit sells it separately. The 2001 documentation said the hall had become a goods office with a stamp and coin museum upstairs, but I haven’t found anything recent saying whether that’s still the case, so I wouldn’t go hunting for it.

What you can see without going in is the Gelsomino viaduct, in Rome, over Via Gregorio VII. Where everything sits in relation to the walls is clearer on the Vatican City map.

The train to Castel Gandolfo, is it still running in 2026?

For years it was. The Vatican Museums ran «Vaticano in treno», which in its last documented season, 2022, left on Saturdays from April to October. It included the museums with an audio guide, the Vatican Gardens, the train from the old Vatican station to Albano Laziale, a shuttle to the Pontifical Villas and the return from Castel Gandolfo to Roma San Pietro at around 18:30. That summer, because of engineering works on the line, some Saturdays ran with a private shuttle bus instead.

In 2026 I haven’t found it on sale. On 25 September the official museums ticket office offers the Papal Palace, the astronomical domes, the Specola and the Borgo Laudato Si’ gardens, but no train visit, and the old family page about the train no longer exists. The Pontifical Villas website still mentions a dedicated train from the Vatican, but its list of bookable visits doesn’t include one. My reading is that there’s no papal train to buy today.

Getting to Castel Gandolfo by train today

On the regional. Trenitalia’s FL4 line, Albano branch, leaves Roma Termini and stops at Castel Gandolfo, and booking sites put the journey at about 40 minutes. The station sits below the town, so you’ll be walking uphill when you arrive. What there is to see, what it costs and which days it opens are all in Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence.

Roma San Pietro, the station you’ll actually use

If you want to reach the Vatican by train, the useful station is in Rome, a few hundred metres from the walls. Unofficial sources say FL3 and FL5 regional trains stop there, and the 64 bus terminates there. I’d use it for the basilica if you’re already staying near one of those lines, and stick with metro line A for the museums. Options from the airports and Termini are compared in getting to the Vatican.