Emergency numbers and help in Vatican City

The numbers

• 112 works from any phone, free, with no credit and no SIM, and operators handle English.

If you need help

• Report a theft to the police and get a written record. No insurer will pay a claim without one, and obtaining it later from another country is close to impossible.
• A lost passport means the police first, then your embassy.
• Your embassy cannot pay your bills or get you out of jail, but it can issue emergency travel documents, contact your family and provide lists of local lawyers and doctors.

Before you need them

• Save 112 in your phone now, and write your accommodation's address somewhere that does not depend on a charged battery.

• No country has an embassy inside Vatican City - there is no room for one in half a square kilometre. Every embassy to the Holy See sits in Rome, on Italian soil, and so does the embassy you would actually need.

• In practice you are in Rome and the Italian services respond.

• Inside the walls, the Vatican Gendarmerie and the Swiss Guard handle security - approach the nearest officer, who will call whatever is needed.

• Ambassadors to the Holy See are accredited separately from those to Italy, and are not who you contact if you lose a passport - your embassy to Italy in Rome is.