PRIVATE VATICAN TOUR

Visit the Vatican with a private tour guide

Meet your private tour guide by the Vatican Museum entrance and after brief introductions enjoy skip-the-line entry to what is arguably the most important and largest art collection in the world. Your guide knows every nook and cranny of the museums and will navigate seamlessly through the galleries, emphasizing the Rooms of Raphael, the Ancient Roman and Greek pieces in the Belvedere Courtyard and the Gallery of Maps, all while ensuring that you stay on track with an eye on the ultimate prize: the Sistine Chapel.

The Vatican Museums weren’t always as we know them today. For over five hundred years, celebrated Popes slowly gathered and commissioned works of art from the most talented painters, architects and sculptors in Italy and brought them to the Vatican to showcase them for their own personal enjoyment and that of a carefully chosen circle of clerics, artists, nobles, and scholars. Each new Pope sought to leave a legacy, commissioning chapels, frescoes, sculptures, libraries, paintings, courtyards – one masterpiece after another until the Papal Collection finally grew to more than 70,000 works of art spread over 1400 galleries.

In 1771 Pope Clement XIV finally opened the doors to the public, making it possible for us to enter the Holy See and walk in the footsteps of Popes and the most celebrated artists from Renaissance and Baroque Italy.

We have hand-picked a selection of the highlights of this massive museum, covering the most important masterpieces from Greek and Roman times to the high Renaissance. Much of this tour will be dedicated to the Rooms of Raphael and of course the majestic Sistine Chapel, from its commissioning to the finishing touches applied by none other than Michelangelo Buonarroti. Your expert guide will help you to discern between myth, fact, and popular Hollywood fiction regarding this epic work of art.