If you can identify the five smallest countries in Continental Europe you get a gold star. If you know where they are on the map, you should be on "Jeopardy." And if you have visited them you don't get anything else; you have already been rewarded.
The tiniest, Vatican City, is undeniably the most influential.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, October 03, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 25 words Type of Material: Correction
Encamp, Andorra: In a Sept. 28 Travel section article about the small countries of Europe, a town in Andorra was called Encampin. It is Encamp.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, October 05, 2008 Home Edition Travel Part L Page 3 Features Desk 0 inches; 23 words Type of Material: Correction
Encamp, Andorra: In a Sept. 28 article about the small countries of Europe, a town in Andorra was called Encampin. It is Encamp.
The next smallest, Monaco, gets very noisy in May.
The third most diminutive, San Marino, was the hilltop hide-out of an escaped slave.
The fourth, Liechtenstein, is widely considered a beautiful Alpine tax haven.
The fifth, Andorra, has the highest average life expectancy in the world at 83.4 years.
Together they take up less space than the Hawaiian island of Oahu, have survived by slipping through history's cracks and are much fancied by tourists, especially in fall, when the crowds have departed.
Recently I set out to see these miniatures, which took time because they are scattered in nooks and crannies across Europe. Besides postage stamps from each, I brought back a range of impressions.
VATICAN CITY
In ancient times, a low hill on the west side of the Tiber River in Rome overlooked a sports field, or circus, marked by a red granite obelisk from Egypt. In AD 64, the Apostle Peter was crucified and buried in its shadow, incising the place in history.
Today people come here to see Michelangelo's Pieta, the Raphael rooms, the ancient Laocoon statue or to study some of the crowning architectural achievements of the Italian Renaissance. Some just want to be able to say they've visited the smallest country in the world. Others come as religious pilgrims.
I take the No. 64 bus to Vatican City from my apartment on the other side of Rome. It stops under the wall around the corner from a side entrance, hardly as grand an approach as along the Via della Conciliazione, the broad Fascist-era avenue that debouches into St. Peter's Square, or as soulful a route as one of the small streets, known as borgos, trammeled by millions of pilgrims since the Middle Ages.
Thus, I sneak into the magnificent piazza, enfolded by two semicircular colonnades conceived by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the 17th century. I always feel a shiver when I turn my gaze to St. Peter's Basilica, built between 1506 and 1615 by 18 popes and their favorite architects, including Bramante, Raphael and, of course, Michelangelo, who gave the church its divine dome.
