Vatican Tour: Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel

This tour of the Vatican is a wonderful chance to admire the treasures of the Vatican Museums, the magnificent Sistine Chapel, one of the world's greatest masterpieces.
You will be led by an expert on this amazing tour that will literally leave your mouth gaping in wonder.
This Vatican Tour always includes special entry to skip the lines at the entrance! Max group size 25 visitors.
Booking steps
Choose the date and entry time.
You will immediately receive an email with a copy of your order. Your ticket will be emailed to you later. If you order after 6:00 pm, you will need to wait until the following morning to receive your or our email informing you when you will receive the voucher. You will find all useful information to meet your guide on the voucher.

You can change the date or time of your tour without fees up to 48 hours in advance.
Easy cancellation: full refund if you cancel 7 days before the date of your visit.
If you need to make changes to an already confirmed booking, please contact our offices by email a tinfo@ticketsrome.com or by phone +39 0552670402.
Requests of changes must always be communicated in writing by email. Visitors must always print out the modified voucher and show the print-out at the ticket office on the day of the tour.

Bags, metal objects, umbrellas, and animals are not allowed in the museums. Even though you have skip-the-line tickets, there may be a line for security checks. Visitors wearing shorts or sleeveless tops are not admitted into the Basilica.
The museums require guests in wheelchairs to follow a different route, which prevents them from following the same route as the organized tour.
If the Basilica is closed for a special religious event, the tour will include the museum's art gallery.
Italy Travels cannot be held responsible for partial closing museum rooms, itinerary variations inside the museum, cancellations or entrance delays due to unexpected events, strikes or decisions taken by the museum direction or unexpected variations of the Pope movements which involve the museum buildings.

Italy Travels tour guides staff is represented by licensed guides of great experience and high level of professionalism, competence and excellence on their job. All Italy Travels guides are authorized by the provincial administration of Rome and most of them are art historians and teachers in art subjects.
All guided tours organized by Italy Travels always include pre-reserved museum tickets when museum tours are included in the tour itinerary. In this way visitors avoid waisting time waiting in line in front of museums ticket offices.

Read the instructions printed on the voucher. You do not need to print a hard copy of the voucher.
Arrive at least 15 minutes before the time the tour starts at the meeting point shown on the voucher.
Your guide will be waiting for you there.
Once the group of participants has gathered, you will go the Vatican Museums entrance and go through a special entrance reserved for groups, skipping the line of those who did not book.
After you pass the security checks and metal detectors, your guide will give you the ticket to go through the turnstiles and the headsets. Your Vatican tour starts here!

Your Vatican tour starts in the Courtyard of the Pigna. This large courtyard is one of the most famous, much-photographed outdoor spots on your Vatican tour. The Courtyard of the Pigna (Pinecone) is a magnificent courtyard with huge proportions lined by some of the finest Vatican buildings and the site of some of the symbolic sculptures of the Vatican Museums. Most important is the large bronze pine cone standing right under the famous "niche," the Vatican building whose facade has an unusual recessed apse shape topped by an open loggia designed by the famous Renaissance-era architect Pirro Ligorio. Dante himself mentioned this great pine cone in the Divine Comedy, already known in his era as it was from Roman times.
The Courtyard of the Pigna also has a famous spherical sculpture by Pomodoro, an enormous sculpted metal ball, another emblem of this courtyard and the Vatican Museums.
Your Vatican tour continues to the Octagonal Courtyard and the section of Ancient Greco-Roman works where you can admire the famous sculptural group depicting Laocoön and his sons trapped by sea serpents.

Before going up to the first floor, your guide will take time to discuss the illustrated panels located outside the courtyards. These panels support your guide's explanation of the structure, art, and history of the Sistine Chapel and its artistic treasures because even guides are not allowed to speak inside the Sistine Chapel. You may also not to take photographs or film videos in the Chapel.
This is why your guide will explain the Sistine Chapel outside with the aid of these informative panels full of images of the entire chapel and all the frescoes that adorn the walls and ceiling, including their details.
Your Vatican tour will continue on the upper floor where you will first go through the three main galleries of the Vatican Museums:
- the Gallery of the Candelabra,
- the Gallery of the Tapestries and, lastly,
- the Gallery of Maps, the most famous of the three.
You and your guide will continue to the Raphael Rooms where you can admire the frescoes that Raphael and his followers painted for the apartments of Pope Julius II, including the world-renowned School of Athens. You will go down into the Sistine Chapel from the Raphael Rooms and here your Vatican tour inside the museums will come to an end. But this is not the end of your experience.