Quick Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel Question

You can go straight to the Sistine Chapel, but lots of other people will have the same idea. You can follow the excellent signage, and double back for the rest of the visit, but in some hallways it will be like swimming against the tide.

No photos are permitted inside the Sistine Chapel.

Sounds good, thank you so much for the info.

The guards made us go through the whole museum and wouldn't allow us to skip the long lines and just go into the Sistine Chapel. And they weren't very nice to us, either.

Try as you might it is not exactly a bee line.

Perhaps that is what David posted about: you do have to walk through part of the museum, but as I recall there are four different paths you can take, the shortest goes fairly directly to the Sistine Chapel; the thing I recall most on the way is the maps gallery.

I am not sure that this information will help Chris - but if someone is thinking of visiting the Vatican Museums and is concerned about the crowds they might consider the Friday evening openings. We went last year - our 4th visit to the museum - and were amazed and pleased by the reduced crowd. Some parts of the museum were not open -Pinoteca for one - but the reduced number of people and "tours" made the visit an entirely new pleasure. I saw paintings and sculptures I had never seen before and we actually got a seat along the wall in the Sistine Chapel. The night openings are only available until the end of October but tickets are still available .

This thread doesn't make it clear enough that there are
1)The outdoor lines to enter the ticket lobby of the Vatican Museums (which your internet purchase confirmation allow you to skip 99% of)
2)Crowded galleries and corridors between the ticket check and the Sistine Chapel
3)The Sistine Chapel is not directly accessible from the ticket check
4)Massive crowds require a "Disney-like" pedestrian pattern that make it very difficult to re-enter the museums from the beginning, or even to skip a section of the one-way path.
5)Museum tickets are only valid for ONE entry from the ticket lobby.

That's what some respondents meant by "upstream" and so on. The OP would do well to study the interior maps carefully if they want to implement a "strategy". Note that right after the ticket check is a clearly signed opportunity to select one of two "large" paths. We were successful in retracing our steps, but it takes patience and, I hope, courtesy.

I was there recently and experienced massive crowds. We booked the Walk of Italy tour early Sistine Chapel. I am glad we paid the money as we went in before the gates opened up. Also watch your wallet we were robbed in Rome by the train station

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I'm gong to do a little more research to get a better idea of the layout to see what makes sense. At the end of the day I know it's going to be crowded no matter what, and since we didn't book one of the tours either before or after normal operating hours (our choice due to scheduling conflicts the short time we have in Rome) we will just accept it and make the most of our experience regardless. Very appreciative of everybody's input in general on this forum as it's answered or at least pointed me in the right direction for many of my concerns prior to our trip.