Which is the smallest country?

At 0.44 square kilometres (0.17 square miles), Vatican City is the planet’s smallest country. A procession of popes owned and ruled portions of Italy for over 1,000 years until the mid-1800s, when the Kingdom of Italy seized most of the papal land. The 1929 Lateran Treaty established the independent state of Vatican City, the pope’s residence and spiritual centre of the Roman Catholic Church. Around 800 people live in Vatican City and only 570 people hold Vatican City citizenship. The only ‘military’ force is the Pontifical Swiss Guard, a corps of single Catholic bodyguards recruited from the Swiss Army.

Answered by Dave Roos