Which Tickets for Vatican, Sistine Chapel and Roman Ruins?

The Vatican website has on-your-own entry as well as guided tours. Which does your friend want? Many tour companies offer options as well. We quite liked Walks of Italy’s Pristine Sistine tour, available on the Walks of Italy website.

By the “ruins” assume you mean the Forum/Colosseum/Palatine Hill? This is quite separate from the Vatican as a site. Again, self-guided or with a guide is the starting point. What is preferred? There are many vendors including Coop Culture which is here: https://www.coopculture.it/en/products/ticket-colosseum-roman-forum-palatine_24h/.

The official Vatican Museum ticketing website is here: https://tickets.museivaticani.va/home/calendar/visit/Biglietti-Musei. Your friend should choose the first date he could visit the Museums, indicate the number of tickets needed and click Confirm. Options for that date will appear on the next screen. Future dates can then be selected at the top of the page.

It seems that at this time, the regular entry tickets (about 25 euros, including the painful booking fee) go on sale approximately 60 days ahead of time and sell out very, very quickly. I don't know what time of day they are released; it might be necessary to get up in the middle of the night to snag one of those if the trip is in peak season. At the moment, it looks as if all the online general-entry tickets are sold out through July 10.

The Museums will be a massively overcrowded zoo.

The Museums offer some early-access options that allow a visitor to enter before the general public. Prices vary according to whether a tour guide is included, how small the group is and whether breakfast is provided. The best-priced options are Breakfast at the Museums (40 euros) for entry at 7:45 or 8:15 AM and Prime Experience (68 euros) for entry at 7:30 AM. Those tickets don't sell out as early as the general-entry tickets, but they will probably sell out well ahead of the date of visit. If your friend sees something acceptable on a date that works for him, he should probably buy it now, because eventually it will no longer be an option, and the only choices will be a much more expensive private tour of some sort or standing in the long, slow-moving ticket-purchase line at the Museums.

Note that even the line for folks who already have entry reservations doesn't get you into the Museums instantly, and the Museums are very, very large. This is not a quick visit.

"go on sale approximately 60 days ahead of time and sell out very, very quickly. I don't know what time of day they are released; it might be necessary to get up in the middle of the night to snag one"

They go on sale at exactly midnight 60 days ahead of time. Now that is good for those of us in the US as that is 6:00 pm Eastern Time which is a very reasonable time to get on line. However the tickets do sell out quickly. I recently purchased a ticket at 5 to 10 minutes past midnight and when I checked, out of curiosity, one hour later there were none available. Also I had to try multiple times to get though on the internet as their site was immediately overloaded at midnight.

Midnight in Italy is not 6 PM in the US, so perhaps Bob means the tickets go on sale at noon, Italian time?

Correction: Oops. I was muddled and thinking about this backwards! Never mind.

It's a confusing mess. We ended up doing tours through Through Eternity Tours and didn't regret it.

Midnight in Italy is not 6 PM in the US, so perhaps Bob means the
tickets go on sale at noon, Italian time?

Italy is 6 hours ahead of the US East Coast- so yes- 6 pm EST is midnight in Italy.

I was in Rome a couple of weeks ago and was quite pleased with my Prime Experience Vatican Museum ticket, purchased 3 months in advance from their website--to avoid the hideous crowds that came surging in at 9 am was absolutely priceless. Ticket was around 64 euros and the 1.5 hr guided tour starting at 7:30 am was excellent, with around 20 minutes of it being in the Sistine Chapel, then we had a good American breakfast--this meant about 4 kinds of meat and sausages--and could then explore more areas of the museum at will. That felt like a salmon swimming upstream so I gave up after about 45 minutes.

The only time I could get a ticket to tour the Colosseum ended up being at 5:45 pm later that same day--a little nap in between was perfect, and my ticket then allowed me to visit the Forum and Palatine Hill within the next 2 days--that was around 24 euros and purchased from the official website 1 month in advance.

Christa- I booked this tour as well.

Did you go straight to the Sistine Chapel upon starting?