It is a question our readers ask us with some frequency: is InfoVaticana read within the Leonine Walls? We wanted to satisfy that curiosity by going straight to the source: the audience records of our own website. And the answer is yes.
The data
According to Google Analytics, the audience-measurement tool used by this outlet, between 1 January and 2 July 2026 334 unique users accessed InfoVaticana from the official network of Vatican City State.
More striking than the number of readers is the way they read: the average interaction time per user during the period is 20 minutes and 41 seconds. In Spain, the same figure is 7 minutes. For context, in digital media the time a reader spends with an outlet rarely exceeds 3 minutes. Twenty minutes per user is not passing traffic or the result of arriving by chance from a search engine: it is deliberate, repeated reading.
The total activity recorded from that network—what Analytics calls “events”: page views, text scrolling, clicks—amounts to 19,004 interactions in the six-month period, an average of more than fifty per reader. In other words, those who read us do so many times and devote a great deal of time to it.
Where the figure comes from, exactly
The figure comes from the demographic report of Google Analytics for InfoVaticana, applying the country-of-origin filter “Vatican City” for the period from 1 January to 2 July 2026. It is not an estimate from third parties or a sample: it is the direct record of this website’s audience.
And how does Analytics know a visit comes from the Vatican? By IP address. Vatican City State, like any sovereign state, has its own assigned ranges of IP addresses—mainly the block 212.77.0.0/19, registered to the Holy See with RIPE, the body that administers Internet addresses in Europe. Every connection that goes out to the Internet through official Vatican infrastructure—the dicastery computers, the fixed network in the Curia buildings or the institutional Wi-Fi—does so from those addresses, and measurement systems geolocate it as “Vatican City.”
Why the real figure is higher
This method of measurement has a consequence worth explaining: the figure only captures part of the readers who are physically inside the Vatican.
The Vatican does not have its own mobile-phone operator: coverage inside the enclave is provided by Italian carriers—TIM, Vodafone, WindTre. Therefore, anyone reading us on a phone with an Italian SIM, which is how most staff browse, appears in the statistics as a reader from Italy, not from the Vatican. The same applies to anyone connecting from their residence in Rome, outside the enclave, or using a VPN that masks the origin of the connection.
In other words: the 334 users counted are only those who access through the official corporate network of the Holy See, typically from their workstations. Anyone reading us on a mobile phone while having coffee in the Borgo registers as just another Italian. The figure is therefore a floor, not a ceiling.
A cautious reading
It is not for this outlet to speculate about who those readers are or what they are looking for. The data allow only one objective conclusion: in a state whose official network serves little more than two thousand people—including Swiss Guards, security personnel and museum staff—several hundred of them have read InfoVaticana repeatedly so far this year, and they have done so with a reading time far above the digital-press average.
To our readers inside the walls, whoever you are: thank you for your trust.