Excerpt from The Life of Pope Leo XIII: Containing a Full and Authentic Account of the Illustrious Pontiff's Life and Work A visit was made to the quaint house where Gioacchino Vin cenzo Raffaello Luigi Pecci (pope Leo XIII) and his six brothers and sisters were born. No member of his immediate family survives him, but some of his nephews, bearing the name of Pecci, still live in the simple and quaint little town, and some of these were interviewed and photographed for this work. While in Rome the author spent much time at the great Vatican galleries of statuary, of paintings, of tapestries, of frescoes and its library, the most remarkable in the world. The Vatican gardens were visited by means of special permits. The Vatican is the residence of the Popes, part of the Court and some of the guards. It contains four thousand rooms and twenty courtyards. The greatest church in the world, St. Peter's, the centre of Christianity, adjoins the Vatican. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.