Rome: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's Basilica Tour

Discover the Vatican with Expert Guidance

Skip the lines and see the Vatican Museums on a specially designed route with a passionate guide who brings everything to colorful life for you as preparation for the Sistine Chapel. Choose the tour covering all three places and have direct access to St. Peter's Basilica through Bernini's Royal Staircase. Top it off by making your visit better with a self-guided tour of the Dome where you get to see both Vatican City and Rome.

It starts the moment you book as our staff helps you prepare for the visit. On that day, come to the Crown Tours office by the Vatican walls where quick check-in happens. Meet your guide there and walk past all the people right into the Vatican.

Walk in and let your guide take you on a journey across one of the grand collections of the museum world, five centuries in the making and scattered through many galleries. With an itinerary thoughtfully provided and stories to make them come alive, you'll be enabled to focus on the real masterpieces. On your way, you will see very important attractions like the Gallery of Maps in which a big fresco describing Italy is painted on its walls, the Gallery of Tapestries, and the Pio-Clementine Museum that holds within it classical masterpieces among them the most respected Apollo Belvedere.

The Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica

It is in the Sistine Chapel that an experience happens, rather than just recalling from a picture what Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and The Last Judgment look like. As you sit and think about your guide's words, respect starts to build up inside the calm walls of this chapel.

If you choose the tour that includes all three places, your guide will take you up the Royal Staircase by Bernini. In old times, only popes and kings used this way to go straight into St. Peter's Basilica. Inside this great building, you can admire Michelangelo's Pietà, Bernini's Baldachin plus see the large inside of this famous UNESCO World Heritage site. To get to the very end of your experience, choose access to the Dome and move on by yourself after the guided part. Go up by elevator, then make the last climb on foot to take in wide views of Vatican City and Rome.

Pick the visit that fits best with your likes and speed. Choices and spots open vary by language and pick. Tour choices include: a two-hour visit to the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel; a two and a half hour guided visit of both; a full three-hour guided visit covering all three spots with direct way to St. Peter's Basilica from the Sistine Chapel; or a three-hour tour with English-speaking guidance covering all three sites plus access to the dome through both elevator and climb. Step out into St. Peter's Square and realize that you have let the inspiration from the museums, wonder at the Sistine Chapel, and beauty plus grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica get to you.