This tour includes a local English-speaking Guide for the 2-hour visit of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel in Rome
THE ENTRANCE FEES ARE NOT INCLUDED
Meeting with our Tour guide in the Meeting-point, which can be arranged according to guest’s requirements:
In this private guided tour You will explore the most important cultural and religious places in the Vatican Museums such as the Pio Clementino Museum, the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche (Gallery of maps), the Galleria degli Arazzi (tapestries, partly based on designs of Italian artists)., the Raphael’s rooms and finally Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel.
The Vatican Museums preserve a collection of works of art that has no equal in the world. In fact, the Vatican palaces consist of a set of grand buildings with many rooms, halls, galleries, libraries, chapels, halls, and gardens filled with treasures of all kinds. From the Renaissance onwards there is no great artist who did not leave here the trace of his immortal genius. The Museo Pio Clementino is so named because of two great popes Clement XIV and Pius VI. In the multiple rooms that make up the museum there are collections of priceless paintings and sculptures such as the statue of Apollo, the Laocoon Group and the statue of Meleagro.
One of the wonders contained here are undoubtedly the Raphael’s Rooms. Built under the pope Nicholas V around 1450, these rooms were decorated initially by Bartolomeo della Gatta, Luca Signorelli and Piero della Francesca, but no trace of these frescoes survived to the present day: they were destroyed when the pope Julius II moved there his apartment and ordered to Raphael a new series of paintings. These four rooms required more than sixteen years of work, between 1508 and 1524, and Raphael died before their completion, so that they were finished by his students. The four rooms are: the Sala di Costantino (Hall of Constantine), the Stanza di Eliodoro (Room of Heliodorus), the Stanza della Segnatura (Room of the Signature) and the Stanza dell’Incendio del Borgo (The Room of the Fire in the Village). The Room of Heliodorus (painted in 1511-14) with the fresco representing the Punishment of Heliodorus; the Room of the Fire in the Borgo with a fresco which represents the main fire miraculously extinguished by the pope Leo IV. The Hall of Constantine, intended for receptions and ceremonies, included, among others, the famous frescoes known as The Baptism of Constantine e The Vision of the Cross. As regards the Room of the Signature, it was the first to be decorated by Raphael. It was the study of Julius II and includes the famous frescoes School of Athens (that is the triumph of Philosophy) and The Parnassus (as the exaltation of poetry).
And finally Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel is one of the most famous cultural and artistic treasures of the Vatican City. It was built between 1475 and 1481, at the time of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, from which it took its name. It is known around the globe to be the place in which the conclave and other official ceremonies of the Pope are held and to be decorated with one of the most famous works of art of the Western civilization, the frescoes by Michelangelo Buonarroti, that cover the vault (1508-1512) and the wall (The Last Judgment) above the altar (1535-1541). The Florentine artist depicted various subjects on the ceiling of the chapel: the figures of the Prophets and of the Sibyls, the misfortunes of mankind according to the Old Testament and also some scenes of Genesis. While, commissioned by the pope Clement VII first and then by the pope Paul III, Michelangelo painted the main wall with scenes of the Last Judgement, an immense work which depicted something like four hundred characters. The nudities in the scene did scandal and were commented negatively by Biagio da Cesena, who was the master of ceremonies of the pope Paul III. Subsequently the pope Pius IV decided to make repair and commissioned Daniele da Volterra to cover somehow those nudities; that is the reason why some characters of Last Judgement were added the famous pants (braghe in Italian) and that painter was thereafter nicknamed Braghettone. In 1980 it was made a gigantic work of restoration of the frescoes of the vault and of the Last Judgement for a period of over ten years, which has aroused the keenest attention worldwide for the Sistine Chapel. During the restorations the pants painted by Daniele da Volterra were removed.
N.B.: The Vatican Museums are closed on Sunday (except the last Sunday of every month, free entrance from 9 am to 12.30 pm; the Museums close at 2 pm).
For the reduced or free ticket in the Vatican Museums, you will be asked your photo ID.
