Semi-private Vatican tour with St. Peter’s Basilica and Sistine Chapel
Make sure your visit to the Vatican Museums is as relaxed and special as it should be with our early access semi-private Vatican tour. Enter early in the morning, before the general public are granted access and skip not only the line, but the rush inside too.
Our semi-private Vatican tour travels in groups of 12 people or less, so your guide is easy to hear and interact with. They’ll also have more flexibility to cater the tour to your group’s needs and interests. Having a guide in the Vatican Museums is invaluable, with over 2,000 rooms it’s impossible to see the entire collection and is a daunting task to face on your own. Our tour group travels a carefully planned route, seeing the highlights of this nine mile collection.
With commentary from your expert, English-speaking guide you’ll see the Pinecone Courtyard, the Hall of Maps, the Gallery of Tapestries, the Gallery of Candelabra and the incredible Raphael Rooms. Listen as your guide brings these works of art to life for you, pointing out things you never would have noticed on your own and teaching you about the characters behind these great works.
A definite highlight of our tour comes when we visit the Sistine Chapel. Guided tours are not permitted within the Chapel, so your tour guide will have already filled you in on the details with the aid of photographs. Take some time inside this world-famous room to pick out the details you heard about, Michelangelo’s boneless self-portrait for example, in which he expresses to the world that he would rather be skinned alive than paint the Sistine Chapel again. As incredible as his work is, it must have been back-breaking, a fact you’ll understand all the better after you learn what it takes to create a fresco.
After getting our fill of the Sistine Chapel, we’ll exit by a special access door which leads us straight into St. Peter’s Basilica and past another long line. See the incredible altar and marvel at Michelangelo’s beautiful sculpture La Pietà, before heading outside to see St. Peter’s Square.
