Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums are a complex of galleries, chapels and collections in Vatican City that display the Roman Catholic Church’s accumulated art and antiquities. The museums trace their origins to papal collections and house key Renaissance masterpieces, most notably the Sistine Chapel.

Principal highlights include the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment, the Raphael Rooms with early 16th-century fresco cycles, and long gallery sequences that present classical sculpture and cartographic works. The route through the museums leads visitors through a broad range of periods and media.

The museums grew from papal collections assembled over centuries, with major additions and formal organisation from the Renaissance period onward; the collections have been opened to the public in stages since the early modern era. Conservation and curatorial work continue to be central to the museums’ operations.

Located within Vatican City, the museums occupy a complex of halls and galleries adjacent to St. Peter’s Basilica and are accessed from Rome; they form one of the city’s principal museum destinations.

• Booking and dress code: Tickets should be reserved in advance during high season and there is a strict dress code for entry to chapel spaces.
• Sistine Chapel dates: The Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512 and remains the museums' central draw for visitors.

What to See #

• Sistine Chapel: The Sistine Chapel - the museums' most visited interior, containing Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes painted circa 1508-1512 and the Last Judgment on the altar wall.
• Raphael Rooms: The Raphael Rooms - a suite of papal apartments frescoed by Raphael and his workshop in the early 16th century, notable for the Stanza della Segnatura.
• Gallery sequences and galleries: The Gallery of Maps and Pio-Clementine Museum among the sequence of galleries that present cartography, classical sculpture and Renaissance collections.