Lateran

Lateran , name applied to a group of buildings of SE Rome facing the Piazza San Giovanni. They are on land once belonging to the Laterani; it was presented to the Church by Constantine. The Lateran basilica is the cathedral of Rome, the pope's church, the first-ranking church of the Roman Catholic Church. It is officially named the Basilica of the Savior, familiarly called St. John Lateran, from a monastery of St. John formerly nearby. The basilica, built perhaps before 311, was restored in the 5th and the 10th cent., rebuilt in the 14th and the 15th cent., and altered again in the 16th, the 17th, and the 18th cent.; the main facade was added in 1733-36. Much of the decoration dates from the Middle Ages and includes the mosaics of the apse, which are among the most celebrated. Frescoes by Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello have disappeared. However, eight 13th-century frescoes in the Sancta Sanctorum chapel (St. Laurence's chapel), painted over and barred to the public in the 16th cent., were restored and opened to the public in 1995. The Lateran baptistery, built probably in the 4th cent., was much restored. The Lateran palace, the papal residence until the 14th cent., survived, greatly changed, until the 16th cent., when it was demolished to make way for the much smaller present palace. It now contains the pontifical museum of Christian antiquities. The older palace was the scene of the five Lateran Councils, and the new one of the signing of the Lateran Treaty.

Lateran the site in Rome containing the cathedral church of Rome (a basilica dedicated to St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, originally founded in the 4th century by Constantine) and the Lateran Palace, where the popes resided until the 14th century.
Lateran Council any of five general councils of the Western Church held in the Lateran Palace in 1123, 1139, 1179, 1215, and 1512–17. The council of 1215 condemned the Albigenses as heretical and clarified the Church doctrine on transubstantiation, the Trinity, and the Incarnation.
Lateran Treaty a concordat signed in 1929 in the Lateran Palace between the kingdom of Italy (represented by Mussolini) and the Holy See (represented by Pope Pius XI), which recognized as fully sovereign and independent the papal state under the name Vatican City.

Lateran Treaty (1929) Agreement between Italy and the Vatican. The Italian government recognized the Vatican as an independent sovereign state with the Pope as its temporal head, and the Vatican surrendered the Papal States and Rome. Roman Catholicism was affirmed as Italy's state religion.