Availability: Monday – Saturday

Group Size: Semi Private Tour (Max 14)  |  Group Tour (Max 25)

Meeting Point: Via Leone IV, close to Vatican Museums entrance (full details sent with confirmation email)

Departure Time: 8.30am, 9.00am, 9.30am, 1.30pm & 2.00pm

Check In Closes: 15 minutes prior to departure time

Duration: 3 Hours. Optional add-on of a Guided Tour of St Peter’s Basilica, lasting 45 minutes extra.

What’s Included: Skip the line early entry tickets to the Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel, expert guide who speaks fluent English, headsets that enable you to explore your surroundings without missing anything.

• This tour of the Vatican gives you an easygoing, yet entertaining glimpse into the world’s most fascinating array of historical treasures
• During your Vatican excursion, you’ll get to admire the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s frescoes.
• At St. Peter’s Basilica (optional), you’ll be stunned by Michelangelo’s Pietà and Bernini’s Baldachin at the largest church in the world and the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture
• Avoid the infamous Vatican lines with skip the line access at both the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica (optional)

Group Tour: Maximum 25 people. Average is around 18 people.

Semi-Private Tour: Maximum 14 people. Usually sold out.

Waste No Time with a Vatican Skip-The-Lines Tour

The Vatican has stood as the center of the Catholic Church since the early decades of Christianity when it was a place of martyrdom and the place where St Peter is believed to have been crucified upside down. So much history sits inside the Vatican museum complex that as little time as possible should be spent waiting on the outside.

As the most visited place in Rome, the Vatican serves 4.2 million people a year. The lines, as you can imagine, can be long, sometimes hours long, and exhausting for anyone who has to wait in them. Keep your energy for the good parts, the Vatican museum, Sistine Chapel, and St Peter’s Basilica. With a Vatican Skip-The-Lines Tour, you get to go in a small group through a special museum entrance. Once inside your guide will take you a journey of the best known and some of the obscure parts of a place that contains some of the world’s most important historical treasures.

Optional Extra: St Peter’s Basilica Guided Tour (45 minutes)

Continue with your tour guide into the Basilica of St Peter. Known as the greatest architectural masterpiece in Rome, St Peter’s took over a century to complete.

Your guide will tell you the story of the nine master architects who each carried the project forward until their deaths; including how that genius Michelangelo – again! – would be the one to finally complete the design for the most challenging aspect of the ambitious design – the great dome which is one of the most iconic images of Rome today.

Inside St Peter’s you will visit a selection of the many ornate monuments, statues and mosaics (there are no paintings in the Basilica – find out why from your guide!), and stand in front of the sacred altar of St Peter, from where the Pope says mass on very special occasions.

Note 1:

Unfortunately, due to unavoidable steep stairways in the Vatican Museums, we cannot accommodate guests with mobility impairments or strollers on this tour. Please send us an email and we will work with you to find a suitable alternative

Note 2:  
Please note that St Peter’s Basilica is not available on the Wednesday 08.30 tour, due to the Papal Audience in St. Peter’s Square. Please do not book the Basilica add-on if you are booking the tour on Wednesday mornings.