Tour of Vatican

The early morning tour is the way to go! There was a thread within the last month about the tour through walks of Italy from a dissatisfied customer. You may want to look for it.

The Vatican runs early-morning tours of its own. They are cheaper than the commercial offerings. I haven't taken any of the tours so I'm not in a position to compare. Tour tickets have been showing up for sale earlier than general-admission tickets on the Vatican Museum website (museivaticani.va), but nothing's for sale yet for next year. You can take a look at the descriptions of what's covered by each offering now, though, and see what you think.

We just got a ticket to the Vatican Museum. You can pickup on an English tour when you get there.

We most often stay around the Ottaviano/San Pietro Metro Station which is about 1/4 mile from the Museum.

Regular tickets to the Vatican Museums will not get you into the museums in the early morning. For that, you have to sign up for some sort of early-access tour.

I would recommend the prime experience booked through the Vatican museums. it gets access to the museums at 7:30 am and has you and the sustain chapel about 830. Breakfast follows and then you can go back into the museums and look at things at your own pace. It’s €66 and good value as includes breakfast.

Note, however, that the Prime Experience does not include St Peter's. After exiting the museum you'd have to get in line again for St Peter's. Tours that include St Peter's take the "shortcut" to bypass the line for St Peter's.

Yes, be really sure what you’re buying. We had an 8:00 entry for the Vatican Museum tours purchased through the Vatican site and it was a wonderful tour. (Early October 2023). We were ahead of the crowds all the way until we got to the Sistine Chapel. Our tour guide left us there and said she would not go into the Sistine Chapel with us but after the chapel, we were free to wander back through any of the Vatican Museum exhibits as long as we wanted. She had given us a thorough overview with the aid of a video monitor, explaining a lot about the Sistine Chapel before we even entered the museum at the start of our tour. Our tickets did not include getting into Saint Peter’s ( I asked hopefully…), and by the time we had retraced our steps along the walls of the Vatican, and got to the entrance of Saint Peter’s, the line was all the way around the colonnades. So disappointing, because it was also almost 90° and just too hot for us to wait in line for a long time.

So next time we go to Rome, if there is a next time, we will take a taxi over and plan to be at Saint Peter’s as it opens. I had read that it opened earlier than 8:00 at some parts of the year, and thought we could do that first, but in October the Basilica opened the same time as our tour started.

We have toured the Vatican multiple times and the early entry tour is the only way to go. The Vatican museum is a zoo. Visiting it in the morning with a knowledgeable guide brings the art and history to life. We took the Walks of Italy tour and our guide was amazing. She was an historian by training and a guide by profession, so we learned a great deal of the history along with a better understanding of the artwork we viewed. It is a long tour as you go to the Vatican museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s, but for us it was worth the time and money.

In our prior visits, we took a private guide in a tour that started later in the morning and we were very disappointed. Have also visited on our own with a guide book. It was crowded, difficult to navigate and see the art we were interested in. Taking the Walks of Italy tour made going to the Vatican a pleasant and interesting experience.