.va

.va

Introduced	1995
TLD type	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Internet Office of the Holy See
Sponsor	Holy See Secretariat of State
Intended use	Entities connected with Vatican City
Actual use	Used for the official Vatican / Holy See site
Registration restrictions	No public registrations are available
Structure	Only official sites of the Vatican are in this domain; they are at second-level names, as well as within vatican.va
Dispute policies	None needed since registrations are unavailable outside Vatican administration
Registry website	Vatican site

.va is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the State of Vatican City. It is administered by the Internet Office of the Holy See.

There are 23 easily found names starting with "www" in the va zone, listed below. There are many more subdomains for email only^[1]

"www" names with websites

• Vatican Main Website is pointed to by all these names:
  • www.va
  • www.vatican.va
  • www.cappellasistina.va
  • www.chapellesixtine.va
  • www.capillasixtina.va
  • www.sistinechapel.va
  • www.sixtinischekapelle.va
  • www.pcf.va
  • www.test23111973.va
• Vatican State Government
  • www.vaticanstate.va
• Main Observatory Page
  • www.osservatoreromano.va
• Paenitentiaria Apostolica
  • www.paenitentiaria.va
  • www.penitenzieria.va
• Pontifical Mission Societies
  • www.ppoomm.va
• No Response from these sites
  • www.mlists.va (but see mlists.vatican.va below)
  • www.pasquini.va
• Login page for Observatory (Comunità di Practica de l'Observatore Romano)
  • www.cdp.osservatoreromano.va
  • www.cdp.ossrom.va
• Photo Ordering Site (SSL Certificate not issued by recognised global CA)
  • www.photo.va
• "Portale Catholica Di Test Accesso ai servizi intranet" - Java driven portal of sorts
  • www.catholica.va
• Extranet, note SSL certificate expired 28th June 2007. Stats available but username/password required and links have to be rewritten from http to https
  • www.extranet.va

Non-"www" names with websites:

• Main Vatican Website
  • benedettoxvi.va
  • benedictumxvi.va
  • sistinechapel.va
  • mv.vatican.va
  • search.vatican.va
  • seraphin.vatican.va
• Vatican Archives
  • asv.vatican.va
• Mailing Lists (Mailman)
  • mlists.vatican.va
• Vatican Library
  • bav.vatican.va
• "Compendium" (Username/Password required)
  • isidoro.vatican.va
• Vatican Webmail (not: SSL issued by same CA as for www.photo.va with CN of "Luigi Salimbeni") (Username/Password required)
  • webmail.mailservice.va

Second-level domains are not available to the public.

Name and email servers within the .va namespace include john.vatican.va (DNS and email), michael.vatican.va (DNS), paul.vatican.va (email), lists.vatican.va (email), and vatiradio.va (email).

Strangely enough, some offsite secondary DNS servers used by the Vatican are named after Egyptian gods, like:

• seth.namex.it.
• osiris.namex.it.

• IANA .va whois information
• Real time .va whois information through DNS Stuff