<hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" style="font-size:12pt" xml:space="preserve">The Vatican Archive is the private archive of the pope. Until 2019 it was called the Vatican Secret Archives and this particular name has given rise to legends, novels, films, rumours... Despite the fact that the archive has been open to the public since 1881 without any restrictions, and although the connotation of 'secret', which has always tickled the fancy of writers and journalists, derives from the ancient meaning of the adjective </hi> <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" rend="italic" style="font-size:12pt">secretum</hi> <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" style="font-size:12pt">, indicating that the holdings were the pope’s private and personal property,</hi><ref xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" n="1" target="ftn1" /> <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" style="font-size:12pt" xml:space="preserve"> this archive and its very rich heritage remain inaccessible to many in several respects. This concerns both the archive holdings as a whole (archival fonds and series) and the historical documents preserved there. </hi>