Real estate: How are the Vatican hidden treasures worth in Paris?

The smallest state in the world has several hundred real estate in the beautiful districts of the French capital.

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This is not invented: the Sopridexthe company that manages the real estate properties of the Vatican, is located at 4, rue de… Rome, in Paris, not far from Saint-Lazare station. Because yes, the smallest state in the world is a large real estate owner. A heritage whose precise value has only known since July 2021, when the administration of the heritage of the Holy See (APSA) had made it public for the first time, as part of the financial transparency effort requested by Pope Francis, who died on Monday, April 21. The date of July 2021 had nothing to chance since opened at that time a trial, at the Criminal Tribunal of the Vatican, around the opaque purchase, in 2014, of a building of 17,000 square meters in the Chelsea district, in London. A trial likely to relaunch Fantasies on the value of the real estate heritage of the Holy See.

Churches, office buildings, residences abroad for its representatives, apartments rented to its staff … According to the budget published in 2021 by APSA, the Vatican has more than 5,000 properties worldwideincluding 4,051 in Italy and 1,120 abroad. Especially in chic districts of London, Geneva, Lausanne and Paris. In the French capital, the Vatican is the owner of 737 real estate Around Boulevard Saint-Michel, in the Odéon district or that of the Champs-Elysées. On the Pupper site, are indeed attached to the Sopridex of Addresses such as 4, rue Guynemer, in the life arrondissement, 8 and 10, boulevard Montparnasse (XVE) or the 37 and 41, avenue Bosquet (VIIE). Vatican Parisian property represents an area of ​​almost 56,000 square meters and are estimated at 595.5 million euros in the APSA report. Admittedly, the real estate crisis, caused by the outbreak of credit rates in 2022 and 2023, has passed through, but it did not necessarily start this valuation, given the high -end nature of the buildings. “Some apartments have housed celebrities like François Mitterrand, Bernard Kouchner and Christine Ockrent”entrusted in an interview with Worldin 2023, journalist Michel Turin, author of a survey on the Church’s housing stock.

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Rome, the first place of investment of the Vatican

In London, the Vatican has 27 real estate, with a total area of ​​4,600 square meters, estimated at 108.5 million eurosand scattered between Saint James Square, Kensington and New Bond Street. In Switzerland, more particularly in Geneva and Lausanne, it holds 140 goods, or more than 16,000 square meters, valued at 91 million euross.

But it is logically Rome who remains the first place of real estate investment of the Vatican. The APSA has 2,400 apartments there and 600 shops or offices, which it rents and which had brought it 99 million euros in 2019, according to the data communicated in 2021. On this total area of ​​1.6 million square meters15 % are rented at market prices and 30 % offer moderate rents, made in particular to employees and retirees from the Church. The remaining 55 % is occupied by Vatican institutions or loaned free of charge to schools or universities.