The only pharmacy in the smallest country in the world is possibly the most visited on the planet. Its story retreats 1277.
Popular among believers and non -believers, the Sistine Chapel and the Basilica of St. Peter are the fascination of any tourist visiting the Vatican City. But somewhere in the shadows of the ecclesiastical state is the most visited pharmacy in the world, The only pharmacy in the country smallest in the world.
In 2008 it was visited by More than 2,000 people a daypharmacy director Joseph Kattackal, at a time when the pharmacy doubled the size.
Managed by more than fifty employees, the Vatican pharmacy processed about 10,000 posts by mail every day and served a clientele that includes Italian residents, clerics and citizens looking for rare or discounted medicines.
Was formally founded on 1874but its roots go even further: they refer to 1277when Pope Nicholas III created the first health service for the papal court. But its modern incarnation arose in the context of the Roman question, a nineteenth -century political dispute over the Pope’s temporal authority after the unification of Italy.
After the fall of the pontifical states and the annexation of Rome in 1870, Pope Pius IX and his successors refused to recognize the Italian state, and were confined within the Vatican walls. During this period of isolation will be that Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli asked Eusebio Ludvig Fronmen-a monk of the Order of the Hospitallers of St. John of God and Chief Pharmacist at the San Giovanni dio Hospital-to provide medicines directly to the Vatican.
Initially conceived as a temporary agreement, Fronmen created a permanent dispensary in the Vatican territory in 1892, managed by members of his religious order.
The pharmacy worked mainly at night until 1929when the Lateran pacts between the Holy See and Italy established the Vatican City as an independent state. This new sovereignty allowed greater access to the public and led to the transfer of the pharmacy to Porta Sant’Anna, closer to the main entrance.
The change has increased its visibility and popularity, mainly because it had a wide variety of drugs that are hard to find in Rome pharmacies, often harmed by bureaucratic delays.
Success called for another change in 1931 for its current headquarters at Palazzo Belvedere, just behind the Vatican post office and in front of the Vatican supermarket.
Today, the pharmacy meets the requests of nearly 12,000 members of the Vatican Health Care Fund, a private health system created in 1958, but Italian citizens can also access their services with valid revenue and an identification document.
And many certainly liked to do so regularly: no taxes are paid in the Vatican pharmacy – drugs are usually 11% to 25% cheaper than elsewhere in Italy.
The pharmacy also has its own creams, lotions or soaps. THE Valium It remains its best -selling product, but the most sought after product is “no doubt” Hamolindan ointment for hemorrhoids, confesses the now former director of the pharmacy.
It is not sold everything: as a Catholic pharmacy, that of the Vatican does not sell contraceptives, medicines used to treat erectile dysfunction or other products considered contrary to the doctrine of the church.
Currently the pharmacy is open to the public from Monday to Friday, from 8:30 am to 6 pm, and until 1 pm on Saturdays (closer to 15h, during the summer months). Visitors can find it at Via Della Posto 00120, Vatican City, accessible through the Angelica Door.
