Vatican Opens Secret Archive
Pictured here is the Vatican secret archive, which has been opened to a man doing a book on them (eat your heart out, Dan Brown!). The archive is possibly the most mysterious collection of documents in the world. Here you can find accounts of the trial of the Knights Templar held at Chinon in August 1308; a threatening note from 1246 in which Ghengis Khan’s grandson demands that Pope Innocent IV travel to Asia to ‘pay service and homage; a letter from Lucretia Borgia to Pope Alexander VI; Papal Bulls excommunicating Martin Luther; correspondence between the Court of Henry VIII and Clement VII; and an exchange of letters between Michelangelo and Paul III.
