Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel Tickets with Audioguide

This will be the fastest option offered that will also make it available for you to make your own plan. Additionally, audio guidance is also included.

Spend some time to explore sarcophagi, which are hand-carved down to the last detail and is thought to be home for the remains of old-time well-known queens and kings, at the Greek Cross Gallery. Visit the Sala degli Animali and explore virtually some imaginary as well as some real figures of fantastic beasts – or you can also visit the Cabinet of the Masks.

Do you want to see how the world map by map-makers changed with the time? Yes? Then you should certainly visit the Upper Galleries that also includes the Gallery of Maps. Check Raphael Rooms to see some work of arts by the hands of some Renaissance masters and to have a rest, visit the Borgia Apartments.

Next thing in the plan? It is time to be astonished by different work of arts like Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s artwork or Vatican’s crown jewel and many other.

Perhaps more than for anything else, the Vatican Museums are famous for their collections of Greek and Roman sculpture. Pope Julius II began to form this collection in the 16th century, but it was not until 200 years later that Clement XI and his successors conceived the idea of a museum proper. Under Benedict XIV the first of the Vatican Museums, dedicated to Christian antiquities, was opened (1756) in the Vatican Library.

About Vatican Museums

During the Renaissance for Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII and Julius II. Bramante designed a part of it, and there were significant additions in the 18th century. The complex also houses the Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel) and the Stanze di Raffaello (Raphael Rooms), a series of chambers frescoed by Raphael.

MUSEO GREGORIANO EGIZIO: The Egyptian collection contains the finds from 19th- and 20th-century excavations (mummies, sarcophagi, statues, funerary artefacts) and, most interesting, the Egyptian-style Roman statuary (Room III) from the Villa Adriana.

MUSEO CHIARAMONTI AND MUSEO PIO- CLEMENTINO: These two sections contain the Vatican’s huge collection of classical sculpture. The less interesting Chiaramonti Museum has many portrait busts, as well as a famous statue of Augustus. The Museo Pio- Clementino’s treasures include the Apoxyomenos , a 1 st-century Roman copy of a Greek original portraying an athlete scraping his body (Room X) and the Apollo Belvedere (AD 130), another Roman copy, in Room VIII. Next to the Apollo is the Laocoon group (50 BC) described by Pliny the Elder. It was dug from the ruins of the Domus Aurea  and wrongly reassembled by Michelangelo. The Belvedere Torso (1st century AD), an object of veneration for sculptors from the Renaissance to Rodin, is in Room III. The Sala degli Animale is filled with carved animals, many of them heavily restored. From the Villa Adriana  came the Candelabri Barberini, original 2nd-century lamps.

MUSEO GREGORIANO- ETRUSCO: The Etruscan section (18 rooms) contains an astonishing collection of artefacts taken from sites including Cerveteri (see page 125 ) and Tarquinia (see page 128). Do not miss Room II where furniture and gold artefacts found in the 7th-century BC Tomba di Regolini-Galassi at Cerveteri are displayed. Other rooms contain early sculpture, funeral stelae, pottery and votive offerings. Room XII contains a distinguished collection of Greek sculpture, a strong influence on Etruscan culture.

SALA DELLA BIGA: Visit this room to see the remains of a 1st- century BC two-horsed chariot. Until the 18th century it was used as part of the episcopal throne in the church of San Marco.

GALLERIA DEI CANDELABRI: The first of three galleries built by Bramante to link different areas of the palace, this contains pairs of marble candlesticks from the imperial era of ancient Rome, as well as a quantity of marble statuary.

GALLERIA DEGLI ARAZZI: This gallery takes its name from the tapestries (arazzi) contained in it. Ten 16th-century Brussels tapestries, based on cartoons from Raphael’s workshop, illustrate stories from the life of Christ. On the right wall are tapestries recording events from the life of the Barberini pope, Urban VIII, commissioned in his honour in the 17th century by his nephew.

GALLERIA DELLE CARTE GEOGRAFICHE: The Map Gallery has 40 panels painted on its walls in the 16th century. Each one depicts a region, island or particular territory of Italy.

GALLERIA DI PIO V: Pius V’s Gallery contains precious 15th- century tapestries from Toumai illustrating the Baptism and Passion of Christ.

SALA DI SOBIESKI: This room holds a huge painting of Jan III Sobieski (king of Poland), defeating the Turks at Vienna (1683).

SALA DELLA CONCEZIONE: This room, decorated with frescos, is devoted to Pius IX’s proclamation on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854). It also contains Michelangelo’s model for the dome of St Peter’s.

STANZE DI RAFFAELLO: Julius II balked at the idea of occupying the apartments used by his unsavoury Borgia predecessor, Alexander VI, and in 1509 commissioned Raphael to redecorate a suite of four small rooms for his own use. By 1520, the year of Raphael’s death, only three of the rooms were complete and not all of them were wholly painted by the master. Nevertheless, this is one of the greatest cycles of fresco painting from the High Renaissance, even if great works by earlier masters of Renaissance painting, Perugino and Piero della Francesca among them, were obliterated in the process.