INFRASTRUCTURE

TRANSPORTATION

          Vatican City has a reasonably well-developed transport network considering its size (consisting mostly of a piazza and walkways). As a state that is 1.05 kilometres (1,150 yards) long and 0.85 km (930 yd) wide, it has a small transportation system with no airports or highways. The only aviation facility in Vatican City is the Vatican City Heliport. Vatican City is one of the few independent countries without an airport, and is served by the airports that serve the city of Rome, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and to a lesser extent Ciampino Airport.

          There is a standard gauge railway, mainly used to transport freight, connected to Italy's network at Rome's Saint Peter's station by an 852-metre-long (932 yd) spur, 300 metres (330 yd) of which is within Vatican territory. Pope John XXIII was the first Pope to make use of the railway; Pope John Paul II rarely used it.

The closest metro station is Ottaviano – San Pietro – Musei Vaticani.

COMMUNICATIONS

          The City is served by an independent, modern telephone system named the Vatican Telephone Service,[134] and a postal system (Poste Vaticane) that started operating on 13 February 1929. On 1 August, the state started to release its own postal stamps, under the authority of the Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Vatican City State.[135] The city's postal service is sometimes said to be "the best in the world", and faster than the postal service in Rome.

          The Vatican also controls its own Internet top-level domain, which is registered as. Broadband service is widely provided within Vatican City. Vatican City has also been given a radio ITU prefix, HV, and this is sometimes used by amateur radio operators.

         Vatican Radio, which was organized by Guglielmo Marconi, broadcasts on short-wave, medium-wave and FM frequencies and on the Internet. Its main transmission antennae are located in Italian territory, and exceed Italian environmental protection levels of emission. For this reason, the Vatican Radio has been sued. Television services are provided through another entity, the Vatican Television Center.

L'Osservatore Romano is the multilingual semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. It is published by a private corporation under the direction of Catholic laymen, but reports on official information. However, the official texts of documents are in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official gazette of the Holy See, which has an appendix for documents of the Vatican City State.

Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Center, and L'Osservatore Romano are organs not of the Vatican State but of the Holy See, and are listed as such in the Annuario Pontificio, which places them in the section "Institutions linked with the Holy See", ahead of the sections on the Holy See's diplomatic service abroad and the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, after which is placed the section on the State of Vatican City. 

RECYCLING

          In 2008, the Vatican began an "ecological island" for renewable waste and has continued the initiative throughout the papacy of Francis. These innovations included, for example, the installation of a solar power system on the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall. In July 2019, it was announced that Vatican City would ban the use and sale of single-use plastics as soon as its supply was depleted, well before the 2021 deadline established by the European Union. It is estimated that 50–55% of Vatican City's municipal solid waste is properly sorted and recycled, with the goal of reaching the EU standard of 70–75%.