The Gallery of Maps is an impressive gallery located on the west side of the Belvedere courtyard in the Vatican City. This gallery houses a series of painted topographical maps of Italy, based on the drawings of the friar and geographer Ignazio Danti.

Pope Gregory XIII commissioned this work in 1580 as part of a set of artistic projects intended to beautify the Vatican. The creation of the 40 panels of the gallery, which is 120 meters long, took three years and was completed in 1583.

The map panels present the entire Italian peninsula in large-scale frescoes, each depicting a region and showing a perspective view of its most important city. The layout of the maps follows a north-south path, starting in the northern region of Lombardy or Piedmont and ending in the southern regions of Apulia or Calabria.

Ignazio Danti expressed the idea that visitors walking along this corridor should do so "as if they were walking along the Apennines, the backbone of the Italian peninsula". Thus, one of the walls depicts the regions and districts facing the Tyrrhenian Sea, with their hills, rivers and forests, while the other shows the regions facing the Adriatic Sea.

Additionally, the Gallery of Maps is not only a display of Renaissance cartography, but also an expression of the power and reach of the Papacy during that era. Each map is surrounded by elaborate artistic and decorative details, including historical and mythological scenes, adding significant cultural and aesthetic value to the gallery. Danti's work was not only a technical and artistic achievement, but also a reflection of the geographical and scientific knowledge of his time, cementing the Gallery of Maps as one of the Vatican's most valuable treasures.