Holy See & the Vatican City
🏛️ The Vatican — Prepare Yourself
One of the things we had been most looking forward to on our Rome trip was a visit to the Vatican. After doing a bit of research — the sort of obsessive Googling that only retired people with too much time on their hands seem to do — I discovered something rather alarming. Unlike the Colosseum and most other major Roman sites, neither the Vatican Museum nor St Peter’s Basilica puts any cap whatsoever on daily visitor numbers. The result? Up to 30,000 people a day attempt to squeeze themselves into what is, rather gloriously, the smallest independent state on the planet. That works out at roughly 6 million visitors a year. Six million. I’ve been to Tesco on a Saturday afternoon and found that unpleasant enough.
So I did what any sensible person does and booked a “skip the lines” three-hour small-group tour through the Vatican Museum website. Best decision I made all holiday.
ℹ️ What You Need to Know Before You Go
Before we get to the good stuff, here are a few things worth knowing before you turn up at the gates of the world’s smallest nation-state and make a fool of yourself.
🏙️ Vatican City itself is a fully independent walled city sitting right in the middle of Rome. It covers about 110 acres — roughly the size of a decent golf course — and has a permanent population somewhere in the 800s. It has been an independent ecclesiastical state since the Lateran Treaty of 1929, when Mussolini’s government finally sorted out a long-running dispute between the Italian state and the Holy See that had been rumbling on since 1870. It is governed entirely by the Pope, who, in addition to being the head of the worldwide Catholic Church, is also technically an absolute monarch. As jobs go, that’s not bad.
⛪ The main things to see are St Peter’s Square, St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museums, and the Sistine Chapel — all within a short walk of each other, which is one of the few mercies the place offers to ageing knees.
📸 Photography is permitted almost everywhere, with one significant exception: the Sistine Chapel. Silence is also expected in there. Whether either rule is actually observed is another matter entirely, but in theory at least, you put your camera away and keep your mouth shut.
💶 The economy of Vatican City runs largely on tourism — admission fees, guidebooks, postcards, and what I can only describe as an industrial quantity of religious souvenirs. It also issues its own euro coins and postage stamps, which are apparently collector’s items. I did not buy any.
👗 There is a strict dress code for entering both the Basilica and the Museums. Shoulders must be covered and legs must be covered to at least the knee — long trousers for men, and for women a skirt or dress of a reasonable length. They are quite serious about this. People who arrive underdressed are turned away, which on a hot July day in Rome seemed to cause a fair amount of distress at the entrance.
⚠️ A Few More Things Worth Knowing
🙏 St Peter’s Basilica is closed on Wednesday mornings for Papal audiences, which have been a tradition at the Vatican since the early twentieth century and were formalised under Pope Paul VI in the 1960s. If you want to catch a glimpse of the Pope himself, your best options are noon on Sundays in St Peter’s Square, or the Wednesday morning audience — for which you will need to book a free ticket at least a day in advance through the Papal Prefecture. Worth noting: Papal appearances can vary during winter and summer months. When we visited in July, there were no audiences scheduled at all, which was either a great shame or a relief depending on how you look at it.
🗓️ The Vatican Museums are closed on Sundays and public holidays, which catches out a surprising number of visitors who haven’t done their homework. The one exception is the last Sunday of each month, when entry is free — which, predictably, makes it absolutely heaving. There is also a long list of Catholic feast days on which the Museums close, so do check before you go.
🎟️ You do not have to join a guided tour to visit either the Museums or the Basilica — you can simply buy a ticket and go in independently. However, during the busy summer months, the queues for walk-in tickets are genuinely, almost impressively, dreadful. We are talking hours. Standing in the sun. In July. With several thousand other people who are also starting to regret their life choices.
⏰ Getting There — Earlier Is Better. Much Better.
Everything I had read on the subject said the same thing: take the earliest tour available. So I booked us on the 8:30 am slot, which meant setting off from our apartment while the city was still largely asleep.
We took the Metro — Rome’s underground system, which opened in stages from 1955 onwards and has since become famous for being perpetually delayed by archaeological discoveries every time anyone tries to extend it — to the Cipro – Musei Vaticani station on Line A. From there it was about a ten-minute walk to the museum entrance.
We arrived just after 8:00 am. The queue was already stretching back a good quarter of a mile. It was, I will admit, with a very particular mixture of sympathy and quiet satisfaction that we walked straight past the entire waiting crowd and headed directly to the assembly point for group tours. This area was relatively calm compared to the increasingly restless throng jostling for position at the ticket booths — a small but deeply enjoyable moment that almost made up for the early start.
🏛️ Vatican Museums
Our guide for the day was Simoneta, a quietly efficient woman who wasted no time in handing us all a set of headsets so we could follow her commentary as we shuffled through the galleries. And I do mean shuffled — the Vatican Museums are not a place you waltz through at your own pace. In the packed, echoing corridors of one of the world’s great cultural institutions, those little audio devices are absolutely essential. Lose sight of your guide in this labyrinth and you’re finished. You don’t even need to drift very far before you’re out of range of the transmitter, and then you’re just another bewildered tourist staring blankly at frescoes you can’t identify.
👥 The Crowds
The crowds, frankly, were something else entirely. I’ve stood in a fair few queues in my time — I’m British, it’s practically a national sport — but this was on another level altogether. Apart from visiting the Taj Mahal on a public holiday, which is its own particular form of organised chaos, I genuinely cannot recall being pressed quite so tightly against so many other human beings at a tourist attraction. The Vatican Museums receive around six million visitors a year, making them one of the most visited museum complexes on the planet. On any given day, that rather shows. We managed to lose several members of our group almost immediately — before we’d even made it up the first escalator from the entrance hall. Classic.
🖼️ Setting the Scene for the Sistine Chapel
Simoneta, to her considerable credit, managed to find us a slightly quieter corner — no mean feat — where there was an interactive multimedia screen. Her mission at this point was to walk us through the paintings on the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel before we actually set foot inside it. This wasn’t just a nice-to-have; it was an absolute necessity. The reason is straightforward: once you’re inside the Sistine Chapel itself, everyone — guides included — must maintain complete silence. The Vatican is quite firm on this. So Simoneta had one shot to prepare us, and she used it well.
The Sistine Chapel, of course, needs very little introduction. Commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV — from whom it takes its name — the chapel was completed in 1481, though it was the ceiling frescoes painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, under the rather reluctant patronage of Pope Julius II, that made it world-famous. The Creation of Adam, the iconic image of two outstretched hands nearly touching, has been reproduced so many times it barely seems real when you finally see the original. The Last Judgement on the altar wall came later still, painted between 1536 and 1541, when Michelangelo was already well into his sixties and apparently still a glutton for punishment. More on the chapel itself shortly.
🗺️ The Scale Model
Also on display in this area was a beautifully detailed scale model of Vatican City, and it was surprisingly worth pausing over. Vatican City became an independent City State under the Lateran Treaty of 1929, signed between the Holy See and Mussolini’s Italian government — an arrangement that presumably suited both parties for reasons that don’t entirely bear scrutiny. At just 44 hectares, it remains the smallest internationally recognised independent state in the world, both by area and by population. The scale model brings all of this into sharp focus: St Peter’s Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the gardens, the walls. It’s a remarkable thing to take in — a sovereign nation you could walk across in ten minutes, yet with a cultural and political influence quite out of proportion to its size. Worth a few moments of anyone’s time.
🏛️ The Vatican Museums — Basically Impossible to Do in an Afternoon
Right, let’s be honest from the outset. We went to the Vatican Museums thinking we’d have a jolly couple of hours wandering about, looking at some nice pictures. We were, to put it mildly, spectacularly wrong about that.
The Vatican Museums sit inside the Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano, a sprawling five-hectare complex that makes most English stately homes look like a garden shed. The museums hold somewhere in the region of 70,000 works of art in total. Around 20,000 of those are actually on display at any given time — the rest, presumably, are stored in some vast underground cavern where they quietly gather dust and wait their turn. If you were to spend just one minute looking at each piece on display, you’d be there for roughly two weeks. I’ll just let that sink in.
Luckily for us, our guide Simeonta was a proper art historian, not just someone who’d read the Wikipedia page the night before. She was brilliant, actually, steering us through the galleries and providing genuinely fascinating insights into the works as we went.
📜 A Brief History Lesson (Bear With Me)
The museums were founded in the 16th century by Pope Julius II, a man who clearly had strong opinions about interior decoration. Julius — who was Pope from 1503 to 1513 and also the chap who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, because apparently he wasn’t keeping himself busy enough — began collecting classical antiquities and displaying them in the Vatican’s Belvedere Courtyard. That modest beginning has grown, over the intervening five centuries, into one of the greatest collections of art and artefacts on the planet.
What’s in there? Rather a lot, as it turns out. We’re talking Egyptian mummies, ancient Greek and Roman statues, Byzantine tapestries, Renaissance canvases, Etruscan bronzes, medieval manuscripts, and enough papal curiosities to keep you genuinely baffled for days. The collection spans thousands of years of human civilisation, which is quite an achievement when you consider that most of us struggle to hold onto a car for more than a decade.
🏗️ The Architecture — Don’t Rush Straight Inside
Before heading into the main galleries, Simeonta wisely took us outside first to appreciate the Vatican buildings themselves. This turned out to be excellent advice, and not just because it delayed the point at which we had to fight our way through the crowds inside. The exterior architecture is genuinely extraordinary — you really do need to pause and take it in properly before plunging headlong into the art.
🗿 Twenty-Six Museums Under One Roof
Here’s something that tends to catch people off guard: this isn’t actually one museum. It’s 26 interconnected museums, built on the orders of various Popes over the centuries to house the ever-expanding papal collections of art, religious artefacts, and general accumulated splendour. Each pope seemingly felt compelled to add something new, like a very expensive and historically significant version of those people who can’t stop extending their kitchen.
The museums receive around six million visitors a year, which goes some way to explaining why, on any given Tuesday, the place resembles Oxford Street on Christmas Eve. To manage the chaos — with mixed success, frankly — the Vatican has devised four separate colour-coded routes through the collections. This is a thoughtful idea in principle. In practice, it doesn’t stop everyone ending up in the same place at the same time, but full marks for trying.
The museum layout is a mixture of outdoor and indoor galleries. The outdoor sections house primarily sculptures and feel surprisingly pleasant, given that you’re essentially standing in a very old Italian courtyard surrounded by priceless antiquities. The indoor galleries are given over to paintings and tapestries, and they are, it has to be said, absolutely rammed.
It is in moments like these that I genuinely appreciate whatever quirk of genetics resulted in my 6-foot 5-inch frame. When you’re tall, you can see over heads. You can see over pushchairs, over camera screens, over the entirely baffling range of selfie sticks that have apparently become mandatory tourist equipment. Everyone else is peering through a forest of elbows. I, meanwhile, can see perfectly well. There are not many advantages to being this tall — doorframes are a constant hazard — but this is definitely one of them.
🗺️ When the Rooms Themselves Are the Exhibit
One thing that genuinely surprised us was how spectacular the buildings themselves are. You spend so long looking at the art that it’s easy to forget to look up. The painted ceilings are extraordinary — vast, intricate, and quite unlike anything you’d find in a modern office block, thankfully. The rotundas are similarly jaw-dropping, particularly the round room inspired by the Pantheon, which houses a tremendous collection of Roman sculptures and a mosaic floor lifted directly from the ruins of Otricoli, dating back to the 2nd century AD.
One of our absolute favourites, though, was the Gallery of Maps. Built between 1580 and 1585 under Pope Gregory XIII — the same Gregory who gave us the Gregorian calendar, so clearly a man who liked to keep track of things — the gallery is a long corridor lined with 40 enormous topographical maps of the Italian regions and papal territories, all painted directly onto the walls. They’re colourful, extraordinarily detailed, and genuinely beautiful. And, perhaps most usefully, they’re long, which meant we finally had a bit of room to breathe.
🏛️ The Raphael Rooms
Of all the rooms tucked away inside the vast labyrinth of the Vatican Museums, we’d argue that none carry quite the same weight as the Raphael Rooms. These four chambers in the Palace of the Vatican contain sixteen frescoes painted by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino — better known to the rest of us as Raphael — and they are, by just about any measure, among the finest examples of fresco painting ever produced. Not bad for a lad from Urbino who died at just thirty-seven.
Raphael began work on the rooms around 1508, commissioned by Pope Julius II who, apparently not content with what was already on the walls, decided everything needed redoing. The frescoes depict great moments from scripture and antiquity: St. Peter’s miraculous rescue from prison, the conversion and baptism of the Roman Emperor Constantine, theological allegories, and scenes of classical learning. All painted with a precision and beauty that frankly makes the rest of us feel rather inadequate.
🎨 The School of Athens
If we had to pick just one masterwork from the sixteen — and goodness knows that’s a brutal choice — it would have to be The School of Athens. Painted between 1509 and 1511, this extraordinary fresco imagines the great thinkers of Ancient Greece gathered together in a grand, sun-lit colonnaded hall. Right at the centre stand Aristotle and Plato, the twin pillars of Greek philosophy, engaged in what one imagines is a very civil disagreement. An elderly Plato points upward toward the heavens, reflecting his belief in the spiritual and the universal, while Aristotle gestures downward toward the earth, grounding himself firmly in the material world. It’s a neat visual summary of two thousand years of philosophical argument rendered in paint. Raphael managed it in a couple of years. We struggle with a shopping list.
What makes The School of Athens particularly clever is that Raphael used it as an opportunity to pay quiet tribute to the people around him. Michelangelo, his great rival, appears as the brooding philosopher Heraclitus, slumped on the steps in the foreground with his writing tablet. There’s a certain cheek in that. Plato himself bears a striking resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci, which was either a compliment or Raphael’s idea of a joke. And then, on the far right of the fresco, a young man turns and stares directly out of the frame, catching the viewer’s eye with quiet confidence. That is Raphael, painting himself in the guise of Apelles, the most celebrated painter of Ancient Greece. It’s a masterclass in modesty. He’s essentially signed the wall by comparing himself to the greatest artist of antiquity.
🖼️ On Through the Galleries
The museums seemed to go on forever. We moved through gallery after gallery at a pace that left little room for proper looking — more of a forced march than a cultural tour. Toward the end, we passed through a room lined with paintings by many of the most celebrated artists of the modern era, including Picasso and Dalí, which under any other circumstances would have stopped us cold. But by then, we all knew what was coming. Everything — the maps, the tapestries, the ancient sculpture, the miles of corridor — had been quietly building toward one thing: the Sistine Chapel.
🎨 The Sistine Chapel
We shuffled into the chapel itself and, good lord, it was absolutely heaving. You could barely move for tourists. It was like the Trafford Centre on Christmas Eve, but with more Japanese tour groups and significantly less sports casual wear. Still, whoever designed the place had the good sense to put everything worth looking at either on the ceiling or high up on the walls, so at least you weren’t fighting for elbow room to see anything important.
The star of the whole show — and really there is no competition — is the work of Michelangelo, who painted both the famous ceiling and the vast wall behind the altar. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, to give him his full and slightly exhausting name, was commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 to paint the ceiling. He finished it in 1512, by which point he was reportedly half-blind, had a permanently cricked neck, and was, by most accounts, absolutely furious about the whole enterprise. He’d actually wanted to be a sculptor. Which, frankly, seems a bit ungrateful given what he produced.
And just to settle something once and for all: he did not paint it lying on his back. That’s a myth. He and his small team of assistants worked standing upright on specially constructed scaffolding, arms stretched above their heads for years on end. If you’ve ever tried painting a ceiling in your kitchen for an afternoon, you’ll have some small sense of what that must have done to a man’s shoulders. Michelangelo himself wrote that the experience left his body in a dreadful state. I can well believe it.
🌟 The Ceiling Frescoes
The great ceiling frescoes run along the central spine of the chapel and depict key scenes from the Book of Genesis. These include the famous Creation of Adam — that iconic image of God and Adam reaching towards each other across a pale sky — along with the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood. They were painted in the wet plaster technique known as fresco, which meant Michelangelo had to work quickly and with absolute confidence. One wrong brushstroke and the whole section had to be chipped off and started again.
If you’re the sort of person who likes hunting for hidden details — and honestly, who isn’t in a place like this — it’s well worth looking closely at the Creation of Adam. The shape surrounding God and the heavenly host has been observed by various art historians and, rather more excitingly, by a neurosurgeon in 1990, to closely resemble the cross-section of a human brain. Whether Michelangelo was making a quietly subversive comment about the nature of divinity, or simply leaving a little Easter egg for future generations to puzzle over, nobody knows for certain. Either way, the man was clearly a good deal cleverer than the average ceiling painter.
⚖️ The Last Judgement
On the altar wall, taking up the entire surface from floor to ceiling, is The Last Judgement. Michelangelo painted this colossal work between 1536 and 1541, some two decades after completing the ceiling — so a return visit, if you like, though presumably with rather more aching joints than the first time around.
The subject matter is exactly what it sounds like. Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. The saved are hauled upward to heaven by angels, while the damned are dragged screaming downward by demons. It is, to put it mildly, not a subtle painting. There are hundreds of figures across the enormous composition, and Michelangelo — never a man to let a slight go unanswered — took the opportunity to settle a few old scores.
One particularly satisfying example involves a chap called Biagio da Cesena, who held the grand title of Papal Master of Ceremonies under Pope Paul III. Biagio had been quite vocal in his objections to the nudity in Michelangelo’s figures, complaining loudly that such things were more appropriate to a bathhouse than a sacred chapel. Michelangelo’s response was to paint Biagio’s face onto the body of Minos, the judge of the dead in the classical underworld — depicted here as a demon, complete with serpent, in the lower right-hand corner of the fresco. When Biagio complained to the Pope, His Holiness apparently replied that his jurisdiction did not extend to Hell, and that was rather that. I find this story enormously cheering.
Below is a photograph of the chapel taken from the Vatican Museums’ official website. It was, we can confirm, somewhat busier when we were there.
⛪ St Peter’s Basilica
After the Sistine Chapel, we made our way into St Peter’s Basilica. It’s worth knowing that if you decide the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel aren’t for you — perhaps the queues have broken your spirit, which is entirely understandable — you can skip all that and head straight to St Peter’s and walk in for absolutely nothing. Well, almost nothing. You still have to pass through security, have your bag searched, and get waved through metal detectors by very serious-looking Italian guards. In fairness, this is the seat of the Catholic Church and home to one of the most famous buildings on earth, so you can’t really argue with a bit of a search.
🏛️ The Scale of the Place
Before we even stepped inside, we spent a few moments outside looking up at the famous central balcony — the Loggia of the Blessings — where the Pope appears to address the crowds gathered in the piazza below. It’s the spot where newly elected popes are announced to the world, and where the current pontiff gives his traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing at Christmas and Easter. That’s rather more history than most balconies can claim.
Once inside, we were immediately floored. St Peter’s is the largest church in the world — stretching 187 metres in length — and you feel every single one of those metres the moment you walk through the door. The building was begun in 1506 under Pope Julius II, with work continuing for over a century. Michelangelo himself took over as chief architect in 1547 and redesigned the dome, which now soars 136 metres above the floor. Looking up at it induces a mild form of vertigo that no amount of gelato can quite cure.
😇 Cherubs That Aren’t Small
As we looked around, we noticed the marble cherubs decorating the walls. Sweet little things, you might think. Except they aren’t little at all. Those apparently dainty figures are over two metres tall. It rather puts the scale of everything else into perspective.
🕍 Bernini’s Baldachin and the Foot of St Peter
In the centre of the sanctuary stands Bernini’s extraordinary baldachin — a towering bronze canopy rising 29 metres over the main altar, commissioned by Pope Urban VIII and completed in 1634. The twisted, corkscrew-shaped columns and the dark, burnished gold finish make it almost impossibly dramatic, even by the standards of a building that doesn’t really do understatement.
Nearby stands a bronze statue of St Peter, seated on a throne. Pilgrims have been rubbing the right foot of this statue for centuries in the hope of receiving a blessing, and the constant attention has worn the metal smooth and shiny over the years. We had a go ourselves — well, you’ve come this far, haven’t you.
🙏 Michelangelo’s Pietà
If there is one single reason to visit St Peter’s Basilica, it is Michelangelo’s Pietà. Completed in 1499 when Michelangelo was just 24 years old — which makes most of us feel thoroughly inadequate — this marble sculpture depicts the Virgin Mary cradling the body of Jesus after the crucifixion. It is breathtaking. The detail in Jesus’ musculature is extraordinary, and what makes it especially striking is that Michelangelo chose to portray him as thin and emaciated rather than strong and powerful, which was very much against the artistic conventions of the time. It feels more truthful for it. The work was so celebrated that Michelangelo — apparently annoyed that people weren’t giving him credit for it — carved his name across Mary’s sash. It remains the only work he ever signed. The Pietà now sits behind bulletproof glass following a hammer attack by a vandal in 1972, which is a sad but understandable precaution.
🔭 Climbing the Dome
Once you have stood in front of the Pietà long enough to feel suitably humbled, and rubbed the foot of St Peter for good measure, it’s worth buying a ticket to climb the dome. The views over Vatican City and Rome are genuinely excellent. You have the option of taking a lift to the roof level or walking all 551 steps — and there is a pleasing logic to the fact that the lift only takes you partway, leaving you with the last stretch on foot regardless. If you pause at the 320-step mark, you can peer down into the sanctuary from high above through the interior drum of the dome, which offers a spectacular and slightly dizzying view of the baldachin and the altar far below. It is a fine way to round off a visit.
🏛️ St Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro)
St Peter’s Square is a vast open space — and yes, before you ask, it is absolutely heaving with gift shops, food vendors and tourists. Lots and lots of tourists. We felt right at home.
The square was designed in the mid-17th century by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, arguably the greatest architect and sculptor of the Italian Baroque period. Commissioned by Pope Alexander VII around 1656, the whole thing took about eleven years to complete. What Bernini produced was nothing short of extraordinary — two sweeping curved colonnades, each four columns deep, that wrap around you like an enormous stone embrace. There are 284 columns and 88 pilasters in total, each one carved from travertine marble, topped by 140 rather earnest-looking statues of saints. The sheer scale of it is genuinely impressive, even by Roman standards, and Rome has rather a lot of impressive things.
Bernini’s design is famously precise. If you stand at a particular spot in the centre of the square — marked, for the benefit of those of us who’d otherwise wander about looking confused, by a stone disc set into the ground — every single row of columns lines up into one perfect single column. It’s the kind of geometric trick that makes you simultaneously admire the genius of 17th-century Italian architects and feel faintly inadequate about your own life choices.
🗿 The Obelisk
The most immediately striking feature at the heart of the square is the Egyptian obelisk standing at its centre. This isn’t just any old lump of stone that someone thought looked decorative. It’s the real thing, carved from red Aswan granite, and it was brought to Rome from Heliopolis in Egypt in 37 AD on the orders of the Emperor Caligula — a man not generally remembered for his good judgement, though credit where it’s due on this occasion.
The obelisk originally stood in Caligula’s circus, which occupied the site more or less where the Basilica now stands. It remained there for the next fifteen-odd centuries until Pope Sixtus V decided in 1586 that it ought to be moved to its current position — a task that took 900 workers, 140 horses and 47 cranes, and apparently caused such collective anxiety that the Pope threatened anyone who spoke with death. Presumably it worked, because the thing arrived upright.
The obelisk is said to mark the very spot where St Peter was crucified — which, given the circus was a popular venue for Christian persecution under Nero, is historically plausible rather than merely wishful thinking. And if that weren’t enough, the gilded ball sitting at the very top is said to contain both fragments of the True Cross and the ashes of Julius Caesar. We had absolutely no way of verifying this, but we thought it best not to ask.
Planning your visit to the Vatican
🌍 Overview
Vatican City is the world’s smallest fully independent nation-state, covering just 44 hectares (approximately 110 acres) within the city of Rome, Italy. Nestled on the west bank of the River Tiber, this extraordinary enclave is both a sovereign state and the spiritual headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, serving well over one billion Catholics worldwide.
Despite its diminutive size, Vatican City carries extraordinary religious, historical, and cultural weight. It operates its own banking system, post office, telephone network, radio and television stations, and newspaper. Its population numbers fewer than 900 people, the majority of whom are clergy, with a contingent of Swiss Guards who have protected the Pope since 1506.
📜 History
The area now known as Vatican City has been associated with Christianity since the 1st century AD. St Peter, regarded as the first Pope, was martyred on Vatican Hill during Emperor Nero’s persecutions in AD 64 and buried nearby. In AD 324, Emperor Constantine commissioned the first St Peter’s Basilica over St Peter’s tomb, cementing the site as a place of Christian pilgrimage.
For centuries, the Popes wielded both spiritual and political authority across much of central Italy through the Papal States. This era came to an end in 1870 when Italian unification led to the seizure of papal territories, and successive Popes refused to recognise the Italian state, declaring themselves “prisoners of the Vatican.” The impasse endured for nearly sixty years until 11 February 1929, when the Lateran Treaty was signed between the Holy See and the Italian government, formally establishing Vatican City as an independent sovereign state.
Vatican City was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, recognised for its outstanding universal value as both a sacred site and a treasury of artistic and architectural masterpieces.
⛪ Key Attractions
St Peter’s Basilica is the centrepiece of Vatican City and the largest religious building in the world. Constructed over the tomb of St Peter the Apostle, it is the result of contributions from some of history’s greatest artists and architects, including Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Maderno. Entry to the Basilica itself is free of charge. Visitors wishing to climb the dome are charged a separate fee.
The Vatican Museums comprise one of the world’s most significant collections of art and antiquities, spread across 54 galleries. Highlights include the Raphael Rooms, the Gallery of Maps, the Pinacoteca, and the celebrated Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo’s breathtaking ceiling frescoes and the monumental Last Judgement can be admired. A significant restoration of the Last Judgement wall was completed in March 2026, revealing the painting’s original vibrant colours for the first time in decades.
The Vatican Gardens cover more than half the territory of Vatican City and offer a tranquil landscape of fountains, sculptures, and manicured greenery, accessible by guided tour.
St Peter’s Square, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the 17th century, serves as the grand ceremonial entrance to the Vatican. Its sweeping colonnades embrace visitors arriving from across the world.
📍 Location
Vatican City is an enclave situated within Rome, Italy. The main entrance to the Vatican Museums is on Viale Vaticano, on the north-western side of Vatican City’s walls. St Peter’s Basilica and St Peter’s Square are accessible from Piazza San Pietro.
The nearest metro station is Ottaviano–San Pietro on Line A of the Rome Metro.
Address (Vatican Museums): Viale Vaticano, 00120 Vatican City
🌐 Website
The official Vatican Museums website, where tickets can be purchased, is museivaticani.va
The official Holy See website is vatican.va
📞 Contact
Vatican Museums Telephone: +39 06 6988 4676 Email: info.musei@scv.va
🎟️ Entry Fees
St Peter’s Basilica: Free admission St Peter’s Dome: €10 (stairs) or €8 by lift, with additional stair section required
Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel: Adults (18+): €20 without advance booking; €25 with online Skip the Line booking (includes a €5 booking fee) Reduced rate (ages 6–18, students, and eligible categories): €8 without advance booking; €13 with online booking Children under 6: Free
Free admission is available to all visitors on the last Sunday of each month (except public holidays), when the Museums open from 9:00am to 2:00pm (last entry 12:30pm). Queues on these days are exceptionally long, with visitors often arriving from 7:00am.
Disabled visitors and one companion receive free entry; this must be arranged in person at the Special Permits desk at the entrance, upon presentation of relevant documentation.
Tickets should be purchased through the official Vatican Museums portal at tickets.museivaticani.va. Visitors are advised to be wary of third-party sites using similar domain names, which may charge significantly higher prices.
🕗 Opening Times
St Peter’s Basilica Winter (26 October – 28 March): 7:30am – 5:00pm Summer (29 March – 25 October): 7:00am – 6:00pm Guided visits available Monday to Saturday, 9:30am – 5:30pm (last registration 5:00pm); Sundays and Vatican holidays, 1:30pm – 3:30pm (last registration 3:00pm).
St Peter’s Basilica Dome October to March: 8:00am – 5:00pm April to September: 8:00am – 6:00pm Closed on Wednesdays.
Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel Monday to Saturday: 8:00am – 8:00pm (last entry 6:00pm) Last Sunday of the month: 9:00am – 2:00pm (last entry 12:30pm) Closed on all other Sundays and on the following dates: 1 and 6 January, 11 February, 21 April, 1 May, 29 June, 15 and 16 August, 1 November, 8, 25, 26, and 31 December, as well as select additional dates throughout the year.
Entry queues are heaviest between 9:30am and 1:00pm. Advance booking is strongly recommended, particularly during the spring and summer months and throughout the 2025–2026 Jubilee Year, when visitor numbers across Rome are substantially elevated.
Best time to visit Rome
🌸 Spring (March–May)
Spring is widely regarded as the finest season to visit Rome. Temperatures are pleasantly mild, ranging from around 12°C in March to a comfortable 22°C by May, making it ideal for exploring the city on foot. The days are long and bright, the city’s piazzas burst into bloom, and the famous wisteria cascades over ancient walls and villa gardens. Crowds are building but have not yet reached the overwhelming levels of summer. Easter, which falls in spring, draws large numbers of pilgrims and tourists to the Vatican, so accommodation should be booked well in advance if your visit coincides with Holy Week. The Roman countryside is lush and green, and al fresco dining becomes an evening pleasure rather than an ordeal.
🧳 What to Pack: Lightweight layers, a waterproof jacket, comfortable walking shoes, a light scarf, sunglasses, SPF 30 sunscreen, a compact umbrella, smart-casual evening wear, and a crossbody bag for sightseeing.
☀️ Summer (June–August)
Summer in Rome is hot, often intensely so, with temperatures regularly reaching 32°C to 36°C and humidity making it feel even warmer. July and August are the peak tourist months, meaning long queues at major attractions, packed public transport, and inflated prices for flights and hotels. That said, summer has its charms. The city hosts outdoor film screenings, concerts at ancient venues, and vibrant evening street life that extends well past midnight. Many Romans leave the city in August, so certain neighbourhoods take on a quieter, more local character. Early morning visits to the Colosseum or the Roman Forum can be magical before the heat builds. Hydration and sun protection are non-negotiable.
🧳 What to Pack: Breathable linen or cotton clothing, a wide-brimmed hat, high-factor sunscreen (SPF 50+), a refillable water bottle, sandals and light trainers, a portable fan, a light cardigan for air-conditioned museums and churches, a modest cover-up for basilica visits, and insect repellent for evenings.
🍂 Autumn (September–November)
Autumn rivals spring as the best season to visit Rome and, for many seasoned travellers, surpasses it. September retains the warmth of summer — often 26°C or above — without the relentless crowds. October brings golden light, cooling temperatures, and the grape harvest in the surrounding Lazio countryside. Rome’s markets overflow with mushrooms, chestnuts, and seasonal produce, and the city’s restaurants are at their most enticing. By November, temperatures drop to around 12°C to 15°C and rainfall increases, but visitor numbers thin considerably and the great monuments can be enjoyed with far more space and serenity. Autumn light lends a particular beauty to Rome’s ochre and terracotta facades.
🧳 What to Pack: A versatile mid-layer (light wool or fleece), a waterproof coat, ankle boots or sturdy walking shoes, trousers and smart jeans, a warm scarf for evenings in November, an umbrella, SPF 30 sunscreen for September, and a tote bag for market shopping.
❄️ Winter (December–February)
Winter is Rome’s quietest and most affordable season for visitors. Temperatures hover between 4°C and 12°C, and while snow is rare, cold wind and persistent rain are common, particularly in January and February. Christmas, however, transforms the city. Piazza Navona hosts its traditional Christmas market, and the Vatican is especially atmospheric for Midnight Mass at St Peter’s Basilica. The major museums are less crowded, and queue times at the Colosseum and the Pantheon drop dramatically. Hotel rates fall sharply outside of the Christmas and New Year period. Those willing to brave the chill will find a more intimate, unhurried Rome — one closer to how the city actually lives and breathes.
🧳 What to Pack: A warm coat (wool or down), thermal base layers, a hat and gloves, a warm scarf, waterproof boots, thick socks, a compact umbrella, smart layers for Christmas concerts or dinners, and a small rucksack for day trips.
📊 Season Summary Table
🏆 The Overall Best Time to Visit
For most visitors, late April to early June and mid-September to October represent the sweet spot. The weather is reliably pleasant, daylight hours are generous, and the city’s most celebrated sights — the Colosseum, the Vatican Museums, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps — can be enjoyed without the suffocating heat or exhausting queues of peak summer. Prices for flights and accommodation are more reasonable, and Rome itself feels more alive and less like a theme park. If budget is the primary concern, a late January or February visit offers extraordinary value and a genuinely authentic experience of the Eternal City. Whatever the season, Rome rewards those who arrive with comfortable shoes, an unhurried spirit, and a willingness to wander beyond the obvious.
Where to stay?
1. Rocco Forte Hotel De La Ville
Sitting directly above the Spanish Steps on Via Sistina, Hotel De La Ville is one of Rocco Forte’s flagship properties in Rome. The building is a restored early 19th-century palazzo with 104 rooms, many featuring traditional wooden floors, marble bathrooms with handmade terracotta tiles, and views over the city’s rooftops. Dining is a genuine strength: there are three restaurants overseen by chef Fulvio Pierangelini, ranging from fine dining to a classic Roman trattoria, plus a rooftop terrace with panoramic views. The two-floor spa covers around 167 square metres and includes a hydromassage pool, steam room, salt room and sauna. The Trevi Fountain is a seven-minute walk away, and the hotel holds two Michelin Keys.
2. Hotel Scalinata Di Spagna
Perched at the top of the Spanish Steps in Piazza Trinità dei Monti, Hotel Scalinata di Spagna is a three-star, owner-managed boutique hotel occupying a 19th-century building in one of Rome’s most central locations. The hotel spreads across five floors and two staircases, with rooms decorated in either classic or contemporary style, several offering rooftop views across the city’s domes and terracotta skyline. A covered rooftop terrace serves the breakfast buffet, which gets consistently good marks from guests. Rooms come with air conditioning, free Wi-Fi, and a complimentary minibar. The Spagna metro station lift is just 50 metres away, making wider exploration straightforward. It’s a compact, well-run property that does what it promises — a reliable, well-located base for visiting Rome.
3. YellowSquare Rome
YellowSquare Rome sits in a large art deco building on Via Palestro, a ten-minute walk from Roma Termini station and within easy reach of the city’s main sights. It operates firmly in the hostel bracket, offering both dorm beds (for guests aged 18–45) and private en suite rooms, all air-conditioned and colourful. The social side is a big part of the appeal: there’s a bar with DJ nights, live music, a gourmet restaurant serving Mediterranean food, cooking classes, a hair salon, and coworking spaces for those who need to get some work done. A shared kitchen, outdoor patio, and bike hire round things out. It’s a well-organised, sociable base that suits independent travellers who want more than just a place to sleep.
