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A Polish pope
St Peter's Square · Vatican City, Vatican City · 1978-10-16
The election of Karol Wojtyła, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, had immediate political weight in communist Poland.
The record
| Date | 1978-10-16 |
|---|---|
| Place | St Peter's Square, Vatican City, Vatican City |
| Coordinates | 41.9022, 12.4539 (landmark-level precision) |
| Scope | World-historic |
| Sources | Wikipedia |
| Added | 2026-08-14 · source: editors |
Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.
Finding photographs
Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
- The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
- Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
- National and municipal archives of Vatican City, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.
Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.
Footage
Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.
Time layers at this place
One place, several moments in time. This location has 14 recorded time layers between 1921 and 1978 — slide through them:
- 1921 — Palace of the Holy Office
- 1922 — Galleria Alberto Sordi
- 1932 — 1932 UCI Road World Championships
- 1937 — Palazzo Jacopo da Brescia
- 1942 — Institute for the Works of Religion
- 1950 — European Convention on Human Rights
- 1955 — 1955 World Fencing Championships
- 1957 — The Treaty of Rome is signed
- 1957 — Embassy of the Philippines, Holy See
- 1958 — 1958 conclave
- 1962 — The Second Vatican Council opens
- 1965 — Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
- 1968 — Order of Saint Augustine
- 1978 — A Polish pope this page
Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.
You can add to this page
This entry is a skeleton on purpose. If you were there, if your family was, or if you simply know the place: photographs (yours or ones you have the right to share), comments and corrections to the record above, and observations — what the place was like before, after, what the books get wrong. Everything is read by a person before publication and credited the way you ask.
What readers have added
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Do you know something about St Peter's Square, Vatican City?
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