Borgia Apartment

The Borgia Apartment is a suite of rooms in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

About

The Borgia Apartment was adapted for personal use by Pope Alexander VI (Rodrígo de Borgia). In the late 15th century, he commissioned the Italian painter Pinturicchio and his studio to decorate them with frescos. The paintings, which were executed between 1492 and 1494, drew on a complex iconographic program that used themes from medieval encyclopedias, adding an eschatological layer of meaning and celebrating the supposedly divine origins of the Borgias. The rooms are: Room of the Sibyls, Room of the Creed, Room of the Liberal Arts, Room of the Saints, Room of the Faith. However, because the rooms were closely associated with the disgraced Borgia family, they were abandoned in 1503 after the death of Pope Alexander VI. In 1889 Pope Leo XIII had the rooms restored and opened for public viewing.