Unable to order tickets at the Vatican Museums and Borghese Gallery

You did notify both card issuers that you would be making purchases in Italy? And have set up Verified by Visa for both cards?

More answers here https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/tickets-for-vatican

Lack of Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode on sites that require "3D security" can indeed result in that non-specific message. If your card has the feature, then an additional screen pops up to input an additional password. Without the feature, there's usually no visible next step.

If PayPal is a payment option, try using it.

Once, when buying tickets for an overseas location, I had to notify the CC company before it would approve the charge. Once I did that, the charge was approved right away.

You are better off making these reservations by phone.

If you have contacted your credit card company and that part is ok, then you should call to see what happened. Are you using the correct website? museivaticini.va? there is a link for contact and the phone and email address is right there.

You don't need to make these reservations by phone.

You need to contact your credit card companies and have them enact the "verified by visa" protocol. The Vatican switched to this about 3 months ago and it looks like most businesses in Italy are doing the same thing. Once the protocol is enacted there shouldn't be any issues.

While on the phone be sure to inform the credit card company of your travel dates and locations.

Donna

Or try American Express if you have that card.

Lola, they may take Amex at the ticket window, dunno, but online at http://www.museivaticani.va the only choices are Master Card and Visa.

It's some sort of issue with the Visa verification system they use - I had the same problem across three different VISA cards. I switched to my Mastercard and it worked instantly. If you only have VISA available you may need to call your card provider so they can push through the charge - it's likely catching in the fraud area.

The Orange SIM card I bought in Paris this past August at the start of our Rick Steves 14 day Best of Europe worked in France, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Germany, Italy, and probably the little piece of Austria we crossed while in the bus.

We (and other people on our tour) had the same problem this past August. As someone above said, it wasn't until we used our Visa that is hooked up with Verified by Visa, that we were able to buy tickets. It took use many attempts to figure this out. Our Charles Schwab Visa with no transaction fees did not work. Our local credit union Visa, which has Verified by Visa (and transaction fees) did work.