After ten years of painstaking restoration, the state Hall of Constantine in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican has regained its original splendour

The largest of the Raphael Rooms, named after the Roman emperor who granted Christians freedom of worship, was decorated under five pontiffs over the course of the whole of the sixteenth century.

The adornment of the hall began during the pontificates of Leo X and Clement VII, the popes of the Medici era. To this period belong Raphael's oil paintings on the walls depicting Comity and Justice, as well as the monumental frescoes on the walls, executed by his workshop under the direction of Giulio Romano and Giovanni Francesco Penni.

The decoration of the hall was then continued during the papacy of Paul III Farnese, with the participation of Sebastiano del Piombo. Finally, the Hall of Constantine was reworked during the pontificates of Gregory XIII and Sixtus V, right up to 1590, when the painting of the vault was carried out by Tommaso Laureti, a pupil of Sebastiano del Piombo and the author of the celebrated picture “The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism”.

“Today we mark not only an important milestone in the work of restoration, but also a new opportunity for a critical and visual reading of one of the symbolic places of Renaissance painting. The Hall of Constantine once again becomes a pictorial atlas of rare narrative and symbolic power,” said Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums.