The Vatican is the world's smallest state, and you ride in and out of it without noticing. The line between Italy and the Holy See is marked on the pavement of St Peter's Square, and the entire country covers less than half a square kilometre, with fewer than a thousand residents. What UNESCO listed, together with the properties of the Holy See in Rome beyond the walls, is a great collection of art and architecture: the basilica built over the supposed tomb of the apostle Peter, the dome that Michelangelo designed, Bernini's colonnade, and the Sistine Chapel and its ceiling, painted in the early sixteenth century.
From a rider's point of view, the Vatican is a place to approach thoughtfully. Motorcycles cannot enter the square, and the area around it is thick with coaches, scooters and pedestrians. The wide Via della Conciliazione, begun under Mussolini in the 1930s after the Lateran Treaty, leads straight to the basilica, and the Tiber embankments to the north and south offer places to park a bike if you look carefully. Rome has a restricted traffic zone, and parking inside the walls fills early in the morning. Fuel is no concern in the capital, which has stations on every major road, so fill the tank in the suburbs and ride in light.
Historically, the little state is the successor to the Papal States, which once ruled central Italy and fell to the Italian kingdom in 1870, leaving the pope a self-declared prisoner in the Vatican until the treaty of 1929. The Swiss Guards in their striped uniforms have been recruited from Switzerland since the early sixteenth century, and they remain one of the smallest and oldest military units in the world.
The ride list from here sets off down the Via Appia, the Queen of Roads, over the Alban Hills, past the lakes of Castel Gandolfo, where the pope has a summer residence. Early morning is the right moment to leave Rome, when the traffic is light, the air is clear and the pine trees along the old road hold the light.