Jansing and Co   |  February 13, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI to spend first part of his retirement at papal summer home

MSNBC's Chris Jansing takes us for a walking tour of the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> bahamas. will step down and get on a helicopter and fly to his summer residence to begin this rare retirement. i took a trip to the small town about 40 minutes to the southeast of vatican city . this is st. thomas's church, one of only three designed from the ground up. it's the center piece of a pea yat is a here like so many. you have the requisite fountain. this is a little town that has been since the 1620s the summer residence of popes and will be the first place that benedict comes to retire after february 28th . and of course, anchoring this beautiful pea yat sda is the residence. you can see these huge doors. it doesn't look that big, but what's behind it is extraordinary because once you open those doors, you have -- look they are opening it it. we almost caught it. behind those doors you have a big courtyard which is on sundays when he's in residence here, he does do his sunday audience. but there's a huge villa with panoramic views of rome. the space between the villas and gardens behind these doors is bigger than all of vatican city with the most extraordinary views including the lakes that you can see over to the right. it gives you a sense of what pope benedict will be seeing once he's no longer pope. e we don't know how long he's going to be here. he will remain at this residence for an undetermined amount of time and go back to the monastery in the vatican where he will finish out his years.