Vatican Museum

You'll must see the Vatican museum when you're in Vatican City! Please take your time to visit this museum with all it's glory and beautiful history, sculptures, fresco's etc.

If you go on sunday the entrance is free but you'll not have the time to visit the whole museum. The queue's are terrible outside the entrance but also inside the museum it is to growded to see everthing good. If you are interested in the history of the Vatican City, The Renaissance time, fresco's, sculptures etc. this is definatly the place to go, but go on another day to explorer this museum, because you'll need a whole day to observated everything. Me, myself, I have spend there 5- 6 hours to see the best rooms of the museum and still I didn't see everthing or heard every history! But I got a damm good impression. It is very much worth your money! I loved it!

You're alowed to take picture and film except in the Sistine Chapel because of damaging the fresco's! Please respect that, don't take pictures! The picture I have in my review or in my blog of the fresco's of the Sistine Chapel I downloaded it from the Vatican museum website or Wikepidia!

TIP: bring a mirror with you! It is easier to look into the mirror then look all the time upwards. It saves a lot of neckache.

history:
The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani) are the public art and sculpture museums in the Vatican City, which display works from the extensive collection of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Julius II founded the museums in the 16th century. The Sistine Chapel and the Stanze della Segnatura decorated by Raphael are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums. The Vatican Museums trace their origin to one marble sculpture, purchased 500 years ago.

it'll be worth of waiting for 2 hours...

Everybody has heard about this marvelous museum. This is not part of the Roma Pass and might not be cheap, but totally worth.

It's more than just 1 museum, there you can find pieces of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Etruscan art. Besides the Masterpieces of art from the Renaissance.

The museum is huge, so be sure to pick up the collections you are more interested in. Of course the famous Sistine Chapel is a MUST.

They are always long lines, so tried to arrive early. Be aware that there might be people trying to sell their spots at the lines.

If you couldn't arrive early (I couldn't) don't worry and come back after 12:00, where the lines are shorter. Yes, you might not be able to see everything but quality over quantity.

If I had to use one word to describe the Vatican Museum it would be: Amazing!!!! It was everything I was hoping it would be! I admit I had high expectations and surprisingly it met them! After seeing the impressive ancient bronze pinecone, globe of the world and the pair of Egyptian lions in the courtyard we went into the museum and were greeted by the equally impressive "Apollo Belvedere", and my personal favorite "Laocoon". Just about every artifact that I had read about or wanted to see was present at the Vatican Museum. The Hall of Tapestries was so beautiful and being able to personally examine Raphael's "School of Athens" was a big highlight of the trip! Of course you can't leave out the Sistine Chapel, but that's a whole other review on it's own!

My two big suggestions for the Vatican Museum: Hire a guide/tour because being shown around by a knowledgable person can't be beat! We met ours at St. Peter's Bascilica, where companies/guides give free tours and then offer to take you on a tour of the museum for a fee. It was the best 25 Euro I spent while in Rome!
My other suggestions is to mail all of your postcards from the Vatican post office. Why? Because we were told that the Italian postal system is notoriously unreliable, while the Vatican postal system is efficient and reliable. I can attest to this since our postcards were received only 4 days after being sent, which is amazing since they had to get all the way to California!