Picking up papal audience tix and seeing St Peter's

It's been a very long time since my papal audience, but at the time there were clear instructions about which door to enter to pick up the tickets. We did not enter the basilica itself, but a suite of offices next it (on the right facing the building). Based on the logistics, I would be surprised if they moved the pick-up location to within the basilica.

Hopefully someone else with more recent experience can chime in.

I know nothing about the audience tickets but have seen the line-up for security to enter St. Peter's. You do not want to be in that line, so I highly recommend getting an entry-time reservation. It includes an audio guide and gets you into a separate, shorter security line.

Hi!

We picked up tickets on the right side of the Basilica, but you remained outside. One of the Swiss Guard actually gave us the tickets and we did not have to go through security. If possible, I would suggest trying to arrive to get the tickets and then do a timed entry. We did not visit the Basilica that day, but I saw others who did.

Happy Travels!

When we went we obtained the tickets via-- https://www.pnac.org/visitorsoffice/faq/ ---

Saved a trip to St Peters to just pick up the tickets . After the Audience did the Dome climb and St Peters itself afterwards.
We did the Vatican Museum on a separate day.

Unless you are on a paid tour of some sort, there was no 'timed entry" to the Church,( at least not when we went pre covid)

You can now make an entry time reservation at modest cost, but those online reservations sell out pretty quickly, I believe.