The Vatican Museums And Sistine Chapel – Tickets & Tours

The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel are among the most popular sites in Rome and our guide will help you easily book tickets and avoid scams.

When Can I Visit The Vatican Museums And Sistine Chapel?

The opening hours from Monday to Saturday are from 8:00AM to 7:00PM, with no entry after 5:00PM. During the tourist season, from April through October, the museums stay open until 8:00PM with a final entry at 6:00PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

On every last Sunday of the month, assuming it isn’t a holiday, there is free entry from 9:00AM until 2:00PM, with a final entry at 12:30PM.

How To Get Tickets For The Vatican Museums And Sistine Chapel

Recommendations For Self-Guided Vatican Tours

First and foremost, buy your tickets ahead of time as the lines during the season can be incredible. Also, plan ahead of time how committed you are to seeing the entirety of the museums. This is a very big place and a guided tour can last more than 4 hours. If you want to see it all, hire a guide and wear comfortable shoes. If you only want to see the highlights, plan what is important to you and breeze quickly through the rest. Make sure to leave some time and energy to enjoy the Sistine Chapel. It is definitely worth the price of admission, but sadly you can not take any pictures.

Recommendations For Guided Vatican Tours

If you want to get the most out of your visit and are looking for recommendations for guided tours, I do have a couple. There are some guided tours from the Vatican, like:

• Hidden Vatican Museums – Bramante Staircase and Niccolina Chapel. The first guided tour that allows access to areas of the museums normally closed to the public.
• Guided Tours for Groups – Gardens and Sistine Chapel. A proposal for private groups (up to 20 people) interested in an official guided tour of the Vatican Gardens and the Sistine Chapel.
• Individual Guided Tours – Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. Choose your tour and join an official guided tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel!

In addition, there are ton’s of tour groups that can offer amazing tours of the Vatican Museums. This is a very popular options and I recommend both GetYourGuide and Viator.

Is There A Difference Between The Vatican And The Vatican Museums?

Yes, there is a big difference between The Vatican and The Vatican Museums. When people refer to The Vatican, they can mean:

• The Office of the Pope and the related administration.
• The sovereign country actually known as Vatican City.
• A shorthand term for St. Peter’s Basilica and the surrounding piazza.

The Vatican Museums, however, are simply a collection of art from around the world as well as the amazing Sistine Chapel.

How Long To Spend In The Vatican Museums And The Sistine Chapel?

While you certainly can visit the main museums in Vatican City in a day, the truth is that it is a short walk, bus or subway ride from anywhere in Rome and it will only take you part of the day to see everything.

The museums contain a huge collection of classical sculptures, tapestries and paintings by Renaissance artists like Raphael, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Bernini, and da Vinci. The museums also have a collection of modern religious art, with works of artists like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso.

Visiting the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel is a unique experience that must be experienced at least once in your life. The visit is a long and interesting trip that will carry you through more than twenty centuries of history and art. The Sistine Chapel, the rooms of Raphael and the art gallery (Pinacoteca) are only a small part of the larger collections.

Do The Vatican Museums Include The Sistine Chapel?

The Vatican Museums are enormous and can take hours to fully digest. Because this is something you want to get right the first time, consider these to be must-see.

Sistine Chapel – Even if you skip everything else in these museums, the Sistine Chapel should not be missed. Michelangelo, one of the most famous Renaissance artists in the world, dedicated almost ten years of his life to the paintings that cover the ceiling and the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The frescoes on the ceiling, collectively known as the Sistine Ceiling, were painted by Michelangelo in the years from 1508 to 1512. They depict incidents and personages from the Old Testament.

The Last Judgment fresco on the west wall was painted by Michelangelo from 1534 to 1541. It is my favorite part of the entire museum and I recently heard a funny story if it is true. The colors on the ceiling are beautiful, but not nearly as bold as the colors on the Last Judgment fresco. The reason for this, I heard, was the paint on the ceilings were paid for by Michelangelo, and so he used the cheapest paint available. The paint for Last Judgment was paid for by the church, so he used the most expensive paint available, thus the bold colors. Kind of funny if it’s true.

Bramante Staircase (Scala Del Bramante) – This staircase was originally built in 1505 and was in a double-helix design. It was designed to allow people and pack animals to ascend and descend without interruption. The modern staircase is also a double-helix and was built in 1932. This is a must see not only for its beauty, but it is very popular on social media, so you need to take a snap as well!

Raphael’s Rooms (Stanze di Raphaello) – These rooms are on the way to the Sistine Chapel and easy to miss, so keep an eye out for them as you approach the end of the museum. You will need to turn away from the Sistine Chapel, which feels unnatural on the best of days. There is a lot of great Raphael work in these rooms, but probably the most well-known is the “School of Athens”.

The Vatican Museums And Sistine Chapel Recent History

There has been some recent history with the Sistine Chapel that I find interesting because it isn’t so well known and is worthy of discussion. Not long ago, Jason Momoa was in Rome filming the 10th installment of The Fast and The Furious. He caused a bit of an uproar online when he posted pictures from his visit to the Sistine Chapel. He quickly apologized for any disrespect and moved on, so good for him.

However, this got me thinking about the outrage expressed. It’s true that visitors are typically forbidden from taking photos or videos in the chapel. There were complaints about his disrespect for such a holy place and outrage that he had offended Catholics. There are a couple of reasons why I think the whole storm was manufactured online outrage and not a real concern:

• First, people think the rule about not photos or videos is in place to protect the art, but it’s actually not. The strict ban was actually enforced because the Nippon Television Network Corporation of Japan owned the copyright on the interior. It was a deal that was necessary when the company paid $4.2 million for restoration work back in the 1980s.

• In 2014, The Vatican rented out the Sistine Chapel for a corporate event, marking the first time in history it has done so. A group of 40 people, on a tour of Rome arranged by automaker Porsche, paid around $6k each for the tour and the privilege to have a “magnificent concert in the stylish setting of the Sistine Chapel arranged exclusively for the participants,” according to Porsche’s website.

Renting The Vatican Museums

The Vatican insisted that it did not actually rent out the chapel and the funds raised by not renting it will go directly to charities of the Pope’s choosing. Given that the Church itself is a charity, by US standards, the Pope will have a lot from which to choose.

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