Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & Basilica Skip Line Private Tour

Itinerary point by point: Vatican Museums: Pinecone Courtyard Chiaramonti Gallery Pio Clementino Museum Courtyard Ottagono Rooms of Animals Gallery of Statues Cabinet of Masks (exclusive entrance) Room of Muses Rotonda Room Greek Cross Room Gallery of the Candelabra Gallery of Tapestries Gallery of Maps Raffaello Rooms Sistine Chapel St. Peter Basilica (inside) St Peter Square

Courtyard or Belvedere Court The Cortile del Belvedere (Belvedere Courtyard or Belvedere Court) was a major architectural work of the High Renaissance at the Vatican Palace in Rome. Designed by Donato Bramante from 1505 onward, its concept and details reverberated in courtyard design, formalized piazzas and garden plans throughout Western Europe for centuries.[citation needed] Conceived as a single enclosed space, the long Belvedere court connected the Vatican Palace with the Villa Belvedere in a series of terraces connected by stairs, and was contained on its sides by narrow wings. Bramante did not see the work completed, and before the end of the sixteenth century it had been irretrievably altered by a building across the court, dividing it into two separate courtyards.

Pio Clementino, Room of Animals, Gallery of Muses, Gallery Rotonda, Candelabra Gallery, Tapestry Gallery, Maps Gallery. The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most renowned Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display,[1] and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.

Raphael's Rooms The four Raphael Rooms form a suite of reception rooms in the Apostolic Palace, now part of the Vatican Museums, in Vatican City. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.

The Sistine Chapel Originally known as the Great Chapel, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who had it built between 1473 and 1481. The fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescoes that decorate the interior, most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment, both by Michelangelo.

We will have the chance to visit the Cabinet of Masks exclusively, that you will be able to admire far from the crowd, to give you a taste of what it was like when they were admitted only few and highly selected guests

The Tour includes the St. Peter's Square Saint Peter's Square is a large plaza located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, the papal enclave inside Rome, directly west of the neighborhood (rione) of Borgo. Both the square and the basilica are named after Saint Peter, an apostle of Jesus considered by Catholics to be the first Pope. At the centre of the square is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, erected at the current site in 1586. Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the square almost 100 years later, including the massive Doric colonnades, four columns deep, which embrace visitors in "the maternal arms of Mother Church". A granite fountain constructed by Bernini in 1675 matches another fountain designed by Carlo Maderno in 1613.

The Tour includes the St. Peter's Basilica from the inside with precious works of art such as the Piety by Michelangelo and the Baldacchino by GianLorenzo Bernini Peter's Basilica is one of the largest buildings in the world and is the largest of the papal basilicas. At the moment the St. Peter's Basilica is a building that measures 218 meters of length and 136 meters of height including its dome. It has an area of 23,000 square meters.