The Pope's home, from the Third Loggia to Santa Marta

It sounds like a simple question, and for twelve years it had an unusual answer. Now it’s the traditional one again. Leo XIV lives in the Apostolic Palace, in the apartment on the Third Loggia that his predecessors used for more than a century and that Francis left empty. Here’s where it is, why it took so long to move in, what Santa Marta was about, and which bits of all this you can see for yourself.

Leo XIV moves back into the Apostolic Palace

The move happened on the afternoon of Saturday 14 March 2026, when the Pope took possession of the papal apartment with his closest staff, according to L’Osservatore Romano. The apartment is on the Third Loggia of the Apostolic Palace, newly renovated, and includes his private study, a library and a small chapel.

That study is the one with the window. It’s where the Pope appears every Sunday at 12:00 for the Angelus over St Peter’s Square, so his home and his weekly public appearance are, quite literally, the same room. I find that the loveliest detail of the whole story.

The first pope to live in those rooms was Pius X, who reigned from 1903 to 1914. Francis broke the habit in March 2013 and Leo XIV has picked it up again.

Ten months at the Palace of the Holy Office

Leo XIV was elected on 8 May 2025, and until March 2026 he stayed where he already lived, the Palace of the Holy Office, his home since he was Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. He had reopened the papal apartment on 11 May 2025, as it had been closed since Francis’s death, but more than ten months went by before the move.

The official source describes the apartment as now renovated, and I wouldn’t read more into it. What matters to a visitor is that since March 2026 the Angelus window is once again the window of the Pope’s home.

Why Francis lived at Casa Santa Marta

Francis was the first pope not to live in the papal apartment. He lived in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, Casa Santa Marta, a residence John Paul II created in 1996 for a very specific purpose, housing the cardinal electors during a conclave. Francis moved in as a cardinal in March 2013 and, once elected, simply stayed.

He gave his reasons himself on the flight back from Rio on 28 July 2013. He said he couldn’t live alone or with a small group; he needed people. Asked whether it was about austerity, he said no, it was for psychological reasons, and added that the papal apartment wasn’t all that luxurious. I like that answer far more than the romantic poverty story that grew up afterwards, because it’s human and it’s his.

What you can see from outside

Looking from St Peter’s Square, the Apostolic Palace is the building rising to the right of the basilica, above the colonnade. Domenico Fontana rebuilt it in 1589 and 1590 on the orders of Sixtus V, and Taddeo Landini finished it under Clement VIII. The apartment takes up the top floor, and the study window is on that façade.

Some guides count it as the second window from the right. The Holy See doesn’t go into that detail and sticks to the third floor and the study. I wouldn’t go looking for it on an ordinary day. Midweek it’s just another closed window, and it only means something when you see it open on a Sunday.

Which parts of the palace you can visit

This is the useful bit, and the ranking above puts it in my order. The apartment where the Pope lives isn’t open. Nor are the Sala Regia or the Pauline Chapel, which weren’t on sale in any product at the Museums’ official ticket office on 24 September 2026.

What you can walk through, on a normal Vatican Museums ticket, are other parts of the same building. The Raphael Rooms were four rooms of the apartment Julius II chose on the second floor. Below them, on the first level, is the Borgia Apartment, six rooms of Alexander VI decorated by Pinturicchio. Julius II left them so as not to live with his predecessor’s memory and moved upstairs to the rooms Raphael would paint. The Borgia Apartment now holds part of the modern and contemporary art collection, and Leo XIII opened it to the public at the end of the nineteenth century. The Sistine Chapel is on the route too.

To go a step further, the Niccoline Chapel can be seen through the Museums’ special closed-areas opening, for a flat €300 per group (up to ten people), with each person’s ticket on top. The Raphael Loggias, according to unofficial sources, are only shown on request.

Castel Gandolfo, the summer house

Outside Rome the Pope spends part of the summer at Castel Gandolfo, a Holy See estate above Lake Albano. In 2026 he was there from 5 to 27 July and returned for 15 and 16 August, leading the Angelus in Piazza della Libertà. It isn’t his permanent home, and the palace there is open to visitors for the rest of the year, except on Tuesdays.

The press reported that from autumn 2025 the Pope spent Monday evening to Tuesday evening at Castel Gandolfo most weeks. I have no official confirmation that this has continued in 2026, since his move into the Apostolic Palace, so I’m not claiming it.

One last thing, since the searches go hand in hand. The Pope is far from the only resident. At 31 December 2024 there were 246 citizens living inside the walls, and 104 of them belonged to the Swiss Guard.