Ticket Confusion for Colsseum and Vatican

The Sistine Chapel shortcut back door is for anybody accompanied by a guide. The Vatican Museums does offer its own tours with expert guides, although I’ve never used their insider tours.

Back in 2012, before they got so strict about requiring guides for every tourist, we were able to slip through that secret door, using advice from Rick Steves’ guidebook. The last visit, in the past five years, we’d hired a private guide - expensive, but we had a particular focus that trip, and anything to avoid backtracking all the way to the entrance of the museum, then walking back around to the separate security line for St. Peter’s, that you don’t have to do if you go through that guided-customers-only door.

Cyn, I don't know as ALL tour companies can access the shortcut from Sistine to basilica. Unless things have changed - and it's possible they have - only tour companies who specifically note that benefit in their tour info take advantage of it (and never on Wed. mornings). Happy to be wrong about that if someone knows differently!

Kate, it appeared that the guy monitoring the door this last time was just looking for someone with an acceptable Guide badge accompanying visitors. Some had a client or two, others were herding a group of a dozen or more. We were waiting for our guide, who left us to observe and contemplate the Sistine Chapel on our our for a while, to make it through the throng of other people to join us again at the back, near the door. I observed at least a couple of people approach the door who were immediately turned away. As he found us, the door got opened, we two went through first, but the monitor double checked our guide, who held up the badge on his lanyard. Maybe there are only particular badges honored, and some fake “Guide” badge might get spotted and rejected right away, but there seemed to be a variety of guides, with a variety of clients, and none were heavily scrutinized, as far as I could tell. Have a Guide? You’re Good to Go.

Perhaps there are official Vatican Guide credentials, requiring a rigorous qualification process. Maybe there’s some secret hand gesture that confirms who’s legit and who’s not! :-)

The walk back around the St. Peter's is 15 minutes? That's just a drop in the bucket for all the walking to be done in Rome so maybe just the Vatican musem tickets are good enough. What is a reasonable price to pay for a guided tour in a group for the Vatican?

What is a reasonable price to pay for a guided tour in a group for the
Vatican?

Waldenfepher, you might want to be more specific. As in your original post, you'd be happy with just the museums and basilica, right? There are a few other parts of Vatican City - such as the Gardens and Necropolis/scavi - but they involve different ticketing, and there isn't a single ticket/tour that includes ALL of them.

If we buy the €20 entry, are we required to exit the museums, walk
around the outside walls, and go back through security at St. Peter's
Square?

Yes.

To my knowledge, the official Vatican tours, booked through the Vatican Museum's website, also do not offer shortcut access to the basilica - as they don't offer a combined tour of museums and basilica - BUT nothing as constant as change, eh? Maybe the best thing would be to contact them and get a firm answer straight from the horse's mouth? If you do, please come back and tell us what they said? As there's been some back-and-forth on this question for awhile, it would be helpful to other posters wondering the same.
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The big benefit of a tour which provides inside access to the basilica is that it eliminates not just the walk between the two but a second security check line at St. Peter's. A pre-purchased, timed-entry ticket for the basilica will likely get you in quicker. https://www.basilicasanpietro.va/en/

I see from a forum post back in 2016 that you've been to the museums and used an audioguide (not Rick's) that you didn't care for.

If someone’s seeing Rome on foot, maybe the backtrack through the Museums, then going back again towards St. Peter’s is just a small part of overall distance, or maybe with lots and lots of walking, finding a few shortcuts actually helps. For me, it’s the retracing through the Museums (although apparently you can do that via the basement, with less of a crowd to have to contend with than on the main floors), and then doing a U-turn outside for more Vatican sights, which could include another Security line and process. So it’s not just 15 minutes (with the walking), but more time (and walking).

The shortcut just seems way more efficient (unless you don’t want to miss what’s displayed in the Museums’ lowest level), but that does require a guide, and as mentioned above by Kate, a guide from the Museums can’t provide that. I think our private guide was more than $300 for the two of us, but it included the entry tickets, and this was a church history guide with an added focus. The price per person drops, of course, depending on the size of your group.

We will be in Rome mid September and really wanted an underground tour of the colosseum. We have 4 dates that we could go. I was online exactly 30 days to the hour to access tickets as soon as they went on sale. No luck the first date we could go but was able to get a guided tour of the underground on the official website for the second date, but in French! The underground tour includes the arena floor. We have already done a private guided tour of the colosseum so this should work as we really wanted to walk around the underground. I personally would wait to buy official tickets. Third party tours are often cancelled plus they charge substantially more. Arena floor tickets are easier to get then the underground.