Vatican/Sistine Chapel visit

Be cautious that you're not mistaking "Not bookable" with "Sold Out". I'm looking at a dummy booking for 2 general-entry tickets for Wed. Sept 11 and see them available for the 16;30 time slot. They're available the next day at 16:00 and 16:30. You are correct that most are already sold out for the next few months - and what's left are selling quickly - but not ALL of them are. More are showing for the latest slots of the day versus the morning so get whatever you can while they're still up for grabs?

It appears on the website that general-entry tickets are now available for sale through the end of the year.

Kathy…I agree. I have been looking at the Vatican Museums website this morning and noticed that general admission tickets are now available for purchase for the rest of 2024.

jconsol, browsing the calendar through October, I see some openings for the earliest morning slots around the middle of the month. In fact, more of those are available versus the AM slots from 9:30 - 12:00. I'm trying to figure out when they put the rest of the year on sale for general-entry tickets! Hmmmmm. I haven't looked at the 3 - 3:30 slots yet.

Also, linfoley6, if you're seeing "Not bookable" for general-entry, tickets, it can also be because you're needing more tickets for any one time slot than are available.

Kathy…I believe they just made tickets for the rest of 2024 available yesterday or the day before.

This information as invaluable. We are set to tour the Vatican with Sonia Tavoletta as our guide on October 12th and I had been operating on the idea that the Vatican Museum tickets would be released 60 days out but saw this post today and was able to buy our tickets for the 8:00 slot on October 12th. I feel very lucky to have seen this post today and thank everyone for passing on this information - much appreciated!

Just buy tickets that will fit with your trip dates when you find them. The Vatican is very busy and one just has to accept it and go with the flow (literally).

Kathy- only looking for 2. I was referring to dates and times that said "sold out". I do understand the difference between not available and sold out. Many of the time slots are reflecting sold out when the dates I was interested in are more than 60 days away and I did not expect that they would even be available to select yet.

Back to my question, does anyone have input on how crowded Wednesday would be since the audience occurs then and whether the Vatican should be avoided that day if not planning on the audience, Thank you

Thanks for this topic, we’re going to be in Rome early November and had not gotten to our planning yet for VC. Now we’re figuring out how to deal with Rome with 3 full days. Thank you for the heads up on VC admission tix! One question as first timers to Rome: would it make sense to start seeing VC with early afternoon admission tix for the museums and Sistine chapel, then go from there to the basilica and piazza later in day on a Tuesday? Any help would be appreciated.
Sue

my advice on this is to check and reserve as early as possible. Because I did not realize that my dates opened up until this morning and was not able to be on the computer all day, I missed out and there are no options available for my dates which is still over 60 days out. I will pursue other options but I definitely missed out even though I was checking the Vatican site fairly regularly

So sorry that it didn't work out for you. I was lucky to see your conversation and could get our tickets because we're not going until November. I've seen other posts about getting popular tickets and some suggest asking the hotel where you will be staying? I think that involved Venice, but it might be worth trying. Good luck and enjoy your travels!

Thank you Sue! Enjoy your travels as well!

Dang, not sure what I am doing wrong. It states there is one ticket available on Oct 3 @ 16:00. Every time I put my information in I get an error code. These are the codes I got so far:

Generic Error
Error code p1
General Error

Help please

That happened to me recently and I am Italian. I suggest a guided tour as they are usually more available, even relatively close to your visit.

Have a lovely time in Rome.

I’m also looking for advice and suggestions regarding going on a Wednesday. I would assume the museum is less busy in the morning time on a Wednesday during the papal mass. Also assuming Wednesday afternoons would be the busiest since so many people probably try to go after the mass. Would love to hear people’s experiences.

I'm looking at the MuseiVA website. Today it shows sold-out for 9/9/24 and non-bookable for 9/10/24. This leads me to believe the tickets are still being released two months in advance. I don't see an option for general admission tickets throughout the end of the year. Am I looking at the correct website? I appreciate any advice.

This was my experience trying to buy 2 general admission tickets for Sept 4... Knowing that tickets are supposedly for sale 60 days in advance, I originally went on the site on July 3 (I'm on MST in Canada) to check if tickets were already available and the website said "not bookable." I checked several times throughout the day, not knowing what time they would be released and later in the evening, it had already changed to "sold out." I was annoyed that I missed them but I clicked through a few other days and noticed there were still tickets available for the week prior, so I have continued to check the website a few times a day since then to see if the status would change.

Yesterday I noticed that Sept 2/3 had changed to "book", so I checked again this morning around 6:30am MST for Sept 4 and the status had changed to "book." There were only a few time slots (8:00, 15:00, 15:30, 16:00, 16:30) that had a few tickets remaining. I attempted to book tickets on my phone and was almost through checkout when the popup with all the rules came up and must not have loaded properly as there was no "x" to close it, so I could not complete checkout! I refreshed and tried again several times on my phone and on my home computer and even though there were still tickets showing, I kept getting error codes (same as the ones mentioned by another poster) so I was not able to get through to the checkout page. Super frustrating! By the time I got to work around 7:45am MST there were still tickets available, so I tried on my work computer and was able to successfully purchase tickets for the 15:00 time slot.

So keep trying! And maybe try on another device if you are receiving the error codes. I couldn't figure out what was causing the errors, but I think if you have your information saved on your device and use it to autofill in your details, the website does not like that or recognize that you have filled in that box, so make sure type everything in manually. And worst case, if you are still unsuccessful, you can always purchase through somewhere like getyourguide.com. This was my plan if I wasn't able to get tickets on the Vatican website. The Vatican website charged a 10 euro fee on top of the ticket price that I didn't know about, so by the time you add that to the cost of 2 tickets and convert to Canadian, the price difference on getyourguide was only about $15, so not excessively more.

Hopefully that is somewhat helpful. Good luck!

I'm also very happy to have read this thread. I needed tickets for October 29th and assumed they were not available yet. I quickly bought them and even got my desired afternoon time slot!

Just wanted to say I also had the same issues with website errors (“error 1P” and “general error” pop ups) as others in this thread. When I switched from chrome to safari (on desktop) I got through first time.

Mobile does not seem to be working at all, neither I nor my partner could get it to work on our phones.