TICKETS & QUEUES
Buy your ticket online!
The Vatican Museum is a very popular tourist attraction and that equals loooooong waiting times to get in. In order to get around that, you can book your ticket online! Unfortunately it doesn't save you any money.... BUT it saves you precious time! ;) If you're anything like me, you want to make the most of your travel time and not waste it by unnecessarily waiting in entrance lines! So be smart, plan your trip to the museum beforehand and get your tickets online. You can choose a fixed date and time for your ticket to be valid. I would really recommend you to come in the morning though! Although the line for people without ticket is waaaaaay longer, the pre-booked ticket line can also get quite long in the afternoon. So don't be lazy and get up early! It's worth it!
The museum offers a student discount to all students under the age of 25. Unfortunately me and one of my other travel buddies don't fit into that category anymore, so although we are still students, we had to pay the full price. Which I think is a bit ridiculous. Student is student, right? ;)
In case you don't want to explore the maze-like museum by yourself, you can also book a guided tour. They cost extra of course but I heard that they are really informative. If you don't feel like following a guide, but still want to get some information, the museum offers audio guides for an additional 7€.
Click here to get to the official Museum Website.
INSIDE THE VATICAN MUSEUM
The Vatican Museum is huge! It's like a labyrinth. You could easily spend a whole day in here and still not see everything there is to see.
Once you're inside, get a free map of the museum and look for the rooms you really want to see. So, basically how it works is, you go from one room directly to the other. There are no hallways from which you could enter a variety of rooms and there are also hardly any shortcuts, so you have to walk through every room in order to get to a section you are interested in.
I personally thought the museum was a bit too overwhelming. There are sooooooo many people and the rooms you go through seem endless. And I feel like, after a while, you can't really appreciate all the displays anymore because there is just too much! ;)
But don't get me wrong! It's absolutely beautiful in there! The opulent architechture inside and the ceiling paintings are quite stunning. Walking through there gives you an idea of just how rich the catholic church really is.
What I found most interesting was the Egyptian section.
There are a lot of egyptian statues. They even have really big ones which is quite impressive. I have never been to Egypt and I really had to wrap my head around the fact that those artifacts I was looking at, are actually the real deal! There were a couple of original sarcophagi and they even have a real mummy in their display. I have to admit the mummy made me feel a bit uneasy.
I also very much liked the collection of roman statues. Amongst the many many statues of roman heros, there are also the statues of the nine muses. They were the guardian goddesses of sacred festivals and the patronesses of the arts, like poetry and history.
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
The Sisitine Chapel was the last part of the museum we visited. Honestly, I went in without any expectations of how I imagined it to look like. I never saw any pictures of it either. I only knew that it was painted entirely by Michel Angelo and that this is where the picture of Adam and God came from. You know, the zoomed in image of the two hands almost touching. This tiny bit that became so famous around the whole world. But in reality it's only a small fraction of the actual picture. And of course there's the image of the cute little naked baby-angels that everyone knows.
Click here to get to the official Museum Website.
INSIDE THE VATICAN MUSEUM
The Vatican Museum is huge! It's like a labyrinth. You could easily spend a whole day in here and still not see everything there is to see.
Once you're inside, get a free map of the museum and look for the rooms you really want to see. So, basically how it works is, you go from one room directly to the other. There are no hallways from which you could enter a variety of rooms and there are also hardly any shortcuts, so you have to walk through every room in order to get to a section you are interested in.
I personally thought the museum was a bit too overwhelming. There are sooooooo many people and the rooms you go through seem endless. And I feel like, after a while, you can't really appreciate all the displays anymore because there is just too much! ;)
But don't get me wrong! It's absolutely beautiful in there! The opulent architechture inside and the ceiling paintings are quite stunning. Walking through there gives you an idea of just how rich the catholic church really is.
What I found most interesting was the Egyptian section.
There are a lot of egyptian statues. They even have really big ones which is quite impressive. I have never been to Egypt and I really had to wrap my head around the fact that those artifacts I was looking at, are actually the real deal! There were a couple of original sarcophagi and they even have a real mummy in their display. I have to admit the mummy made me feel a bit uneasy.
I also very much liked the collection of roman statues. Amongst the many many statues of roman heros, there are also the statues of the nine muses. They were the guardian goddesses of sacred festivals and the patronesses of the arts, like poetry and history.
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
The Sisitine Chapel was the last part of the museum we visited. Honestly, I went in without any expectations of how I imagined it to look like. I never saw any pictures of it either. I only knew that it was painted entirely by Michel Angelo and that this is where the picture of Adam and God came from. You know, the zoomed in image of the two hands almost touching. This tiny bit that became so famous around the whole world. But in reality it's only a small fraction of the actual picture. And of course there's the image of the cute little naked baby-angels that everyone knows.
So naturally I automatically looked for those images when we went inside the chapel. I found them very quickly too and I have to say it was kinda cool seeing the actual originals. Unfortunately our visit to the sistine chapel was cut very short by the tons and tons of tourists who were ushered through. The chapel was very crowded and museum staff kept telling us to keep walking. We really didn't have a lot of time to take it all in. I mean, I understand that they want to keep the crowd moving, so there's no "traffic jam". You only had the chance to look for a while when you moved to the middle of the chapel. Which we did for a few minutes. But still you can't really enjoy it with soooo many people around. Also the light in the chapel that day was quite poor and so the colours looked a lot more faded than they really are.
In conclusion, I was glad that I got to see the Sistine Chapel with my own eyes, but I wasn't too impressed by it. And neither was my sister (who was travelling with us). We agreed that the paintings are actually really impressive but the circumstances just weren't ideal. Meaning the tons of tourists, the poor light and the fact that we didn't get enough time to actually look at everything. Also, if you have ever seen a picture of the Sistine Chapel, it is painted all over! From ceiling to walls! And you actually don't even know where to look first^^. It's an overwhelming experience for all the senses ;)
Just to give you an idea of how many people visit the museum!
Don't let that shock you though, it's still worth visiting the MUSEI VATICANI when in Rome ;)
CIAO!
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