Vatican lifestyle is rather, well, religious, given that its nine hundred or so residents are mostly all high clergy representatives and live in what is, alongside Jerusalem and Mecca, one of the most important religious cities in the world. 

Itself a country, the Vatican is mostly perceived by incomers as a subsection of Rome .  Home to popes, history, prophecy, and some of the most stunning art in the world, for all its spirituality, much of what makes the Vatican such a tourist magnet is what is on the outside.  (Note: most of its non-tourist areas are off-limits to visitors.)

The Sistine Chapel , designed by a team of painters, is acclaimed primarily for its frescoes by Michelangelo, who did the super-famous ceiling, as well as other parts of the chapel.  Nine panels held here depict the Christian take on man’s early history, from Creation to Noah.  Having undergone a controversial restoration at the close of the last century, the Sistine Chapel stands to this day as the artistic gem of the Catholic community.

The Raphael Rooms , also designed in the early part of the sixteenth century, fill an apartment with masterpiece artwork hard to rival anywhere else in the world.

About three centuries after these creations, Pope Gregory XVI founded the Gregorian Egyptian Museum , which houses artifacts and artworks from the ancient land of Pharaoh.  Boasting nine rooms of exhibits and sculptures, it forms an excellent counterpart to the Etruscan Museum , also founded by Gregory Sixteen and dedicated to the preservation of the cultural precursor to Rome.  Home to a trove of archeological spectacle, the Etruscan collections are a must-see for anyone at all interested in ancient Roman history.