Tour the Vatican Museums with TravelVatican.com

See the great Vatican museums with TravelVatican.com. Our travelling website will help you plan your Vatican trip, book plane tickets, hotels and even cars. In no time you can be admiring the endless selection of artworks, religious relics and ancient masterpieces.

Even for the travelers who feel they've seen enough museums to last them a lifetime, the Vatican Museums offer an amazing experience, well-worthwhile. The "Musei Vaticani" as they are called in Italian, are of the most prominent museums in the world and over 4 million tourist make their way to see them every year. Unlike other museums these are not merely collections of art pieces gathered from different locations. They are a vast assortment of ancient artifacts or spiritual, archaeological and cultural importance taken from the enormous collections built up by the Roman Catholic Church in numerous centuries.

The founder of the museums was Pope Julius II and they were completed during the 16th century. They contain magnificent paintings, sculptures and other artworks and include several monumental artistic creations, such as the eternal Sistine Chapel, the Raphael Rooms and Loggia, the Chapel of Beato Angelico and many others.

Start you tour with a stroll through the exquisite picture gallery which is connected to the museum complex and then continue to the Christian, Profane and Missionary-Ethnological Museum with its huge collections of archaeological pieces and artworks. You'll find the History Museum in the Lateran Palace or go straight to the Collection of Modern Religious Art that was added to the complex in 1973.

If you find any of this confusing, worry not. The entire complex is organized so that you can see all the places following one single rout. It is best to plan your arrival to the area so that it doesn't fall on Saturdays, Mondays, the last Sunday of each month and immediately before or after a holiday. The guided tours are usually fascinating and very educational, and if you remember to book a place in advance you won't have to stand in line. If you have no patience for a line or a group, there are audio tours available for a small sum.

As in all other areas of the Vatican, keep a formal dress code of modesty - no bare shoulders, short skirts or short pants.