- Category
- Art and Museums, Vatican, Newly Added, Small Group Tours
- Duration
- 4 hours
- Location
- Rome
Sites Visited
- Sistine Chapel
- Vatican Museums
- St. Peter's Basilica
Included
- early entry access tickets
- 4 hours with a PhD or MA-level guide
Itinerary Details
This tour will start off in the Vatican Museums, discussing papal history as you start on the ‘percoso classico’, the path to some of the world’s most famous ancient and Renaissance paintings and sculptures. Along the way you may make a number of stops, including the Pio Clementino Museum, the Gallery of Maps, the Gallery of Tapestries, and maybe the Pinacoteca as well, connecting the dots between the history and aesthetic significance of these masterpieces as you stroll. You will benefit from some extra space as you navigate the hallways thanks to your early entrance.
Having been fully briefed by your expert guide when you meet, you will then have the opportunity to enter the Sistine Chapel and admire the intricacy and grandeur of Michelangelo's most admired work.
Your last stop will be St. Peter’s Basilica, where you’ll gaze upon the profound beauty of Michelangelo’s Pietà and survey the church’s celebrated architectural features, before heading out to St. Peter’s Square to finish off with a peek at the Swiss Guards.
FAQ
Is this tour wheelchair accessible?
While it is possible to visit the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel in a wheelchair, there is no wheelchair access from the Sistine Chapel to St Peter's Basilica. If you use a wheelchair, please contact us to discuss alternate options.
Why is this tour special compared to other Vatican tours?
Context is proud to offer clients a very unique and exclusive 8 am first entry into the Vatican Museums’ doors, guaranteed to be reserved only to a handful of other collaborating tour operators. This means that you will be the among the first to enter both the Museums' galleries and the Sistine Chapel, before the larger daytime crowds flood in.

Liz, a native of San Francisco, California holds degrees in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley and Università degli studi "La Sapienza", Rome. She specialized in restoration and urban design. Her restoration projects have brought her to work in direct contact with the rich historical layers of Rome and Italy. She has been leading study walks for Context Rome since its beginning and has lived in Rome since 1988 practicing architecture, researching design and lecturing at university study abroad programs.

Sara is an art historian with doctoral degrees in Medieval and Modern Art History and Classical Antiquities. She is the author of a book, published by the Accademia dei Lincei, on the antiquities collection of Pope Julius II and has written various articles in important scholarly journals on the history of Renaissance and Baroque collections. More recently, she had published a book on some of the most famous paintings of Caravaggio in Rome which introduces a new interpretation of the works, based on philological data, and which is changing the way we look at this artist. For many years, she has combined her philological research with her work as a university instructor, museum educator and professional tourist guide.

Olivia is a Rome licensed guide and an expert art historian who has worked as a main contributor to the award-winning Eyewitness Guide to Rome. She combines this role with her job as a professor, teaching a course at the Lorenzo de Medici School in Rome on Roman civilization. In addition she has contributed to the National Geographic Lost Cities of the Ancient World. Olivia infuses her discussion of Rome with a sense of what it's like to grow up in the city and be Roman.
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