Early Morning Vatican with Sistine Chapel Semi-Private Tour

Overview

For all you early birds out there, our Early Morning Vatican Tour is the best way to start your day in the Eternal City. Skip the lines and join our expert guide to be amongst the first visitors to enter the Museums, where an enchanting collection of wonders await. Witness the splendour of Michelangelo’s spectacular one-man-show in the Sistine Chapel bathed in the soft light of a Roman morning, and admire the frescoes of Michelangelo’s greatest rival in the Raphael Rooms. And that’s not all: explore the Vatican Museums’ unrivalled collection of classical art, tapestries and sculptures before concluding your tour with an escorted entry to St. Peter’s Basilica. Our early morning Vatican tour is a chance to see the treasures of the Vatican Museums at their best: get your day off to the perfect start and join us for this unique experience!

*Disclaimer: For reservations made less than 72 hours in advance, your tour will end in the Vatican Museums as we cannot guarantee skip the line tickets into St Peter's Basilica. *

Description

Explore the Vatican Museums in the early morning

As an accredited tour company with the Museums, our Vatican tours provide skip-the-line tickets for all our clients, providing you with the most convenient morning visit to admire Michelangelo's awe-inspiring frescoes. Our early morning Vatican tour offers the perfect environment in which to admire the Sistine Chapel and the artworks of the Museums, giving you the space to appreciate their beauty and comprehend their meaning.

Exploring the Vatican with an expert guide in a small group will help you to visualize the cultural context that gave birth to these incredible artistic masterpieces – you’ll learn about the ambitious artists, princes, merchants and bankers who created a new world of spectacular cities studded with elegant palaces and magnificent churches. Visiting the Vatican you’ll understand why the Renaissance was one of the most important periods in human history, an amazing time when the flowering of the arts was accompanied by the evolution of science - together laying the foundations for our modern world.

Meet the genius of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel

Whoever sees the Sistine Chapel through the eyes of Michelangelo, whoever reads in it his thoughts and sentiments, encounters a genius. Who he was, how he lived and what he thought are the main themes of our visit. Our guides will bring to life the great building projects of the Italian Renaissance and together we will relive the environment of the Papal court in Rome in which Michelangelo created his masterpieces. The figures of Jonah, Adam, Eve, Noah and thousands of others on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and in the Last Judgment reflect the profound ideas of Michelangelo – you’ll be able to appreciate what they say, and learn how these frescoes redefined not only art, but the way in which we look at the world.

Explore the courts of the Italian Renaissance in the Raphael Rooms

This was a period of overwhelming enthusiasm and of amazing innovation. The men of the Renaissance didn't merely dream of changing the world - they really revolutionized it. The printing press, the geographic maps with which Columbus reached the Americas, modern science, architecture, art and the sense of beauty (a concept often demonized in the Middle Ages), all these were their creations. The frescoes of the Raphael rooms perfectly depict the world of the contemporary courts that governed the course of this new world and where the great geniuses of the age called home.

The cultured conversations fueled by the wine of sumptuous banquets, the statues brought to light by a frenzied passion for excavations, new fashions, and above all new ways of thinking and living, are marvelously recreated by Raphael with the perfect touch of his graceful brush. This is an experience that we will have the opportunity to relive in the flesh on our Vatican group tours. Indeed, there is an entire world to discover here, a world of which we ourselves are the children.

Get up close to amazing masterpieces on our Vatican Museums tour

Some of the most important works that we will discover, such as timeless Greek masterpieces like the Laocoon, the Belvedere Torso and the Apollo Belvedere, were excavated at the time of Michelangelo and Raphael after being lost for centuries. They studied and admired them in the same beautiful spaces where they are preserved today. This is what makes the Vatican Museums so special and unique in the world: their walls incorporate the history of the Renaissance.

The artworks the great masters created are the fruit of their careful study. We will walk through the Vatican Museums stopping by the Pinecone courtyard, the Belvedere courtyard, the tapestry galleries and many classic statues retracing the experience of Raphael and Michelangelo centuries ago. Discovering a meaningful selection of masterpieces with our knowledgeable guide, you will appreciate the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel in their original context.

From the Sistine Chapel, your guide will escort you to St. Peter's Basilica, where you can enter on your own accord, without having to wait in line. 

After exiting the Sistine Chapel, you will have an expedited escort directly to the entrance of St Peter's Basilica. Here you will be able to enter on your own accord. Your guide will explain what you can visit inside the Basilica on the walk to the entrance.

The Basilica of St. Peter's may be subject to unscheduled closings and late openings for religious ceremonies. Because these are often last-minute for security reasons, we do not have time to notify our guests. We will not provide any refunds.

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