online vatican museum tickets

I posted about this in another thread awhile ago, but I can't find the earlier post. The answer is yes and no. This is how it works.

There are two lines into the Vatican. The one on the right as you face the museum entrance is for tours and reservation holders, the other is general admission. The general line is the one that you hear horror stories about. You may still have to wait in line, and it could take a bit of time if you are particularly unlucky and show up at the same time as a large number of tour groups, but the reservation line is generally shorter & faster.

One note: the lines outside the museum are because the security checkpoint is almost directly inside the doors and create a bottleneck. Once through security, if you have a reservation, you need to go all the way upstairs (third floor) to the ticket area and show your reservation to receive your actual tickets. Again, it's possible there would be a line here, although I didn't have one.

I didn't make a reservation. I purchased a ticket online and have a voucher for 13:00 on may 4th.

Hi Dennis

We just got back from Italy. We did an online reservation for Saturday, April 18. We arrived an hour early just to see where we needed to go, and were prepared to wander around the area, but the security guard just let us in early. We by passed a very long line, so for the small extra cost for the reservation, it was worth it as we got in early, were able to manage our time prior to noon, and did not waste any time waiting in a line up.

Grazie David, mille grazie

Unless they've changed it since I was there in November (very possible), the reservation/ticket is the same thing. We had to exchange our voucher for an actual ticket inside the museum, but everything was already paid.

Oh, and the guard let us in early too--but since it was November, there were no lines at all. Glad to hear they'll still do that.