How to See the Sistine Chapel Without the Crowds
Issue #27
For first-time visitors to Rome, the Vatican Museums are usually at the top of the bucket list. The massive complex, which actually comprises 24 museums, plus various galleries and chapels, has housed the papal collections since the 15th century. The Vatican Museums get a staggering 6 million visitors per year on average. To put that into context, the population of Rome is around 4.3 million. You can imagine how crowded it gets.
I visited the Vatican Museums for the first time on my first visit to Rome with my family in 2008 and what I remember most is a sense of fatigue and frustration. Visiting the museums without a guide feels like wandering through a labyrinth. Even as someone who loves art and visiting art museums, I found it a bit overwhelming. After a couple of hours, I started to despair that we would never make it to the Sistine Chapel. When we finally did, it was so hot and crowded that it was difficult to fully appreciate it.
Since then, I have found myself in the extremely lucky position of getting exclusive tours of the Vatican Museums without the crowds and getting to experience the magic of the Sistine Chapel with only a handful of other people not once but twice. The first time was in 2019, when the Vatican celebrated the completion of a project to install LED lights in the Sistine Chapel, the Raphael Rooms, the Sala Reggia, and St. Peter’s Basilica. The most recent time was last summer, when global booking platform GetYourGuide held a contest and gave away tickets to a series of 6 a.m. tours with the clavigero (i.e. key keeper) as he prepared the museum to open for the day.
Inspired by the popularity of the contest, GetYourGuide has just launched a series of exclusive experiences called Originals by GetYourGuide—and yes, ‘Turning on the Lights at the Vatican Museums’ is one of them. Availability is still extremely limited, but there are currently slots available for one tour per month: May 19, August 18, September 15, October 13, November 18, and December 16. The April, June, and July tours are presumably sold out. Tickets cost €200 per person, which isn’t cheap, but is a massive bargain considering that this tour normally goes for a minimum of €500 per person.
This year, tour guides are gearing up for such an intensely busy season with such limited availability that you’ll be lucky if you can confirm one of these exclusive tours at all. Just the other day, Elisa Valeria Bove, CEO of Roma Experience, told me that she’s organizing a tour for a VIP client so desperate to get an exclusive tour of the Vatican Museums that she’s willing to pay a staggering $20,000 for this experience.
So why do people go so crazy for this tour? Having done it myself, I can tell you that it is truly incredible to get this iconic museum (almost) all to yourself. And no, this isn’t a sponsored post. There’s no affiliate link and I’m not getting compensated for this in any way. I just think it’s a big deal that these tickets are on sale because this tour is so exclusive.
On the GetYourGuide tour, you join a small group of people at 6 a.m. and are led by Gianni Crea, who has been the Vatican’s head key keeper for a decade. At the start of the tour, he explains that there are 2,797 keys, all of which are numbered and kept on large keyrings except for the key to the Sistine Chapel. That key is kept separately in a sealed envelope that gets signed every evening by the key keeper and the museum’s administration. It gets kept in its own safe and has no duplicate.
Crea then leads the group through the museum, letting each participant use one of the keys to open a door or turn on the lights. I asked him what the oldest key is and he handed me a hefty key from the 1700s, later instructing me to use it to open the door to the Museo Pio Clementino. Throughout the tour, Crea points out some of the museum’s most significant works, like the Belvedere Torso and the ancient Greek sculpture of Laocoön and his sons.
Participants on the tour get to see off-limits areas, like the original 16th-century Bramante staircase. The Renaissance master created this staircase with a double helix design that lets the people ascending and descending take two different paths so they never cross. The famous double helix staircase that everyone gets to see was added in 1932.
For me, one of the highlights is the Gallery of Maps, a long hallway decorated by 16th century geographical paintings showing the various regions of Italy, which was inspired by the one at Villa Farnese in Caprarola, about an hour north of Rome. After that, the tour arrives in the Sistine Chapel and the participants are left alone for a few minutes to admire Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the early morning light.
When I was there, we also got to see the off-limits “Sala del Pianto” (“Crying Room”), where the newly elected pope changes into his papal robes for the first time, so-named for the emotive power it holds. After breakfast at the cafe in the courtyard, Crea finished the tour by bringing us up to one more off-limits area: a terrace with views of the courtyard and St. Peter’s dome.
GetYourGuide’s tour is the least expensive way to join this exclusive sunrise tour, but if those dates don’t work for you and money is no object, you can go through a high-end tour operator. Roma Experience and Imago Artis both offer sunrise tours of the Vatican Museums with the clavigero. I’m not a morning person, but the super early wake-up call was worth it for this. Alternatively, you can book the Vatican’s “Extra Time - Sistine Chapel” tour for €78, which includes exclusive access to the Sistine Chapel after it closes to the public. I haven’t personally done this tour, so I can’t tell you how it compares to the sunrise tour.
Further Reading
Following the GetYourGuide tour last summer, I reported on the experience and how to enter the contest for AFAR.
I’m far from the only fan of this tour. Travel + Leisure and Lonely Planet covered it too. See what they have to say about it here and here.
In 2019, I got an exclusive tour of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms as part of a small group of journalists invited by OSRAM, the lighting firm that installed LEDs in the Vatican. I wrote about the lighting upgrade for AD Pro by Architectural Digest.
I got to do this a month before lockdown. It remains one of my top 10 life experiences.
How cool! One of the things that has kept me from seeing the Sistine Chapel all the times I've been to Rome is the crowds, and I could see what a lovely experience it would be. Gotta get me on that 20k Euro tour though!