"Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Revealed" To Open in Rome

If you're visiting Rome between March and September 2012, plan to visit the Capitoline Museums for the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Revealed. One hundred original documents -- spanning 400 years of Papal history -- will leave the confines of Vatican City for the first time. The records are usually kept in Vatican Secret Archives, a highly secure building behind St. Peter's Basilica.

Some of those documents on display will include:

• an appeal by the English Parliament asking the Pope to annul Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon
• items from the heresy trial of Galileo, whose scientific theories attracted the hostility of the Catholic Church
• a letter written on birch bark in 1887 by the Ojibwe Indians of Ontario, Canada, to Pope Leo XIII

The exhibition opens March 1st. You can purchase a combined exhibition/museum entrance ticket for the Capitoline Museums for 12 euros and visit Tuesday through Sunday, 9 a.m through 8 p.m.
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