Top Rome landmarks

Skip-the-Line Vatican, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's | Small Group

Name: Skip-the-Line Vatican, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's | Small Group
Brand: What a Life Tours
SKU: 7559P6
Price: 73.19 USD
Rating: 5 (5112 reviews)

Recommended by 97% of travelersBadge of ExcellenceRome, Italy

Priority Access The Official Vatican Tour with Sistine Chapel and St Peters Basilica

From $73.19

per person

Select Date and Travelers

up to 24 hours before the experience starts (local time)

3 hours (approx.)
Mobile ticket
Offered in: English

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Overview

Save time in the smallest country in the world with priority access tickets to the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. This hassle-free tour take you to some of the Vatican's must-see sights. Rather than get lost in the enormous churches and museums, your guide picks the best sights for you to see.

Save time with pre-reserved, skip-the-line tickets
Receive personalized attention on a small-group tour
Get personal headsets so you can hear your guide clearly
An easy way to see the highlights of the Vatican City

What's Included

Skip-the-line entry to the Vatican Museums & St. Peter's Basilica
Entry to the Sistine Chapel
English-speaking licensed tour guide
Headsets to hear the guide clearly
Easy meet up point to our office (5 min walk from the Museums)
Small Group
Tickets included

Gratuites
St. Peter's Dome

Meeting and Pickup

Meeting point

What a Life Tours
Via Santamaura, 14B, 00192 Roma RM, Italy
The meeting point is at our office at Via Santamaura 14-b, you will be looking for What a Life Tours. The closest Metro stop is Ottaviano which is about a 6-minute walk away. Please allow extra time to reach the meeting point and notice that the meeting time is 15 minutes before the start time.

End point

St. Peter's Basilica
Piazza San Pietro, 00120 Città del Vaticano, Vatican City
The tour ends with St. Peter's Basilica (except for the 9:30 tour on Wednesdays and any other occasions when the Basilica is closed - in those cases, the tour ends with the Sistine Chapel).

What To Expect

Your tour begins at an office location around the corner from the Vatican entrance. Meet your guide and the rest of your group (up to 12 people).

Head over to the Vatican Museums and breeze right past the crowds at the door: Tours include skip-the-line admission tickets. The collections are vast, but your guide will direct you to the main highlights, including the Gallery of Maps and Raphael Rooms.

The guide will explain the artworks and the Vatican’s papal history during the 90-minute visit. Headsets are provided, so you’ll be able to move around freely.

From there, head to the Vatican's star attraction: the Sistine Chapel. Listen to your guide explain the intricacies of Michelangelo’s famous fresco.

Last stop is St. Peter’s Basilica, where you’ll see Michelangelo’s *La Pietà* and Bernini’s massive gilded baldachin. Tours end inside the basilica’s stunning interior, leaving you free to continue your visit.

What a Life Tours

10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free

Vatican City (Pass By)

Vatican Museums

1 hour 30 minutes • Admission Ticket Included

Gallery of Maps

10 minutes • Admission Ticket Included

Sistine Chapel

25 minutes • Admission Ticket Included

St. Peter's Basilica

40 minutes • Admission Ticket Included

St. Peter's Square (Pass By)

Additional Info

Confirmation will be received at time of booking
Not wheelchair accessible
Stroller accessible
Near public transportation
Most travelers can participate
St. Peter's Basilica is an active parish and therefore subject to last-minute closures due to mass or other religious events. In these cases, we will offer an extended tour of the Vatican Museums (including areas normally not part of the tour). Please note that 2025 is the Jubilee year, closures of St. Peter's Basilica can happen anytime without further notice. No refunds are recognized for unexpected closures.
While the Vatican Museums are equipped with elevators for wheelchair/walkers access, they are not conveniently located on the group tour route and only give access to specific sections of the Museums. As a result, we cannot accommodate wheelchairs/walkers on this tour.
The ticket is valid only for the day and time reserved. We are unable to accommodate late arrivals due to a time entrance of the Vatican Museums tour voucher. Missed tours or tickets due to late arrivals are non-refundable. Please allow extra time to reach the meeting point as Rome's streets can be confusing. Meeting time is 15 minutes before the start time of the tour.

Please remember to bring with you a valid ID document for all participants.
We cannot accommodate service animals.
A dress code is required to enter places of worship and selected museums. No shorts or sleeveless tops allowed. ALL participants MUST cover their knees and shoulders. You may risk refused entry if you fail to comply with these dress requirements.
Please notice that we are not responsible for the number of visitors the Vatican Museums allow inside.
Big-size umbrellas are not allowed.
No pictures, videos, or even speaking is allowed in the Sistine Chapel.
We recommend that you bring your own headphones as the ones provided by the Vatican have a single earpiece only, and you may prefer to use both earbuds to hear the guide better.
This tour/activity will have a maximum of 12 travelers

Cancellation Policy

You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.

Traveler Photos

Reviews

4.9

5,113 reviews

Total review count and overall rating based on Viator and Tripadvisor reviews

Reviews by Viator travelers.

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Showing 1-10 of 5,113 reviews

Good tour, but crowded

Larry_O, Jan 2025

The tour and our guide were very nice, but the Vatican is very crowded basically at all times so do not expect to find it “slow”. We went in January thinking the locations would not be busy, and this was still very crowded. Also, there are quite a few locations with steps, and some are a considerable number of steps, so please keep that in mind. Due to the crowds, you move pretty quickly through the museums, and then you get some time to admire the Sistine Chapel (very packed in here) before going to the Basilica. At this point after a tour here, you are released and can continue to visit things and look on your own. Also, don’t forget to send yourself a postcard from the Vatican Post Office.

A Great Experience!

Joyce_B, Jan 2025

John was fantastic! He was extremely knowledgeable and knew all the little things about what we saw and how to get around.

Great guided tour

Debs_F, Jan 2025

This was a small group of us on a guided tour. Our guide was very knowledgeable and we skipped the queues and learnt a lot.

Tour guide was excellent....

Kathleen_M, Jan 2025

Tour guide was excellent. She was knowledgeable and efficient I how she fixed us through the Vatican

Amazing Experience

Scott_C, Jan 2025

The perfect tour for anyone visiting the Vatican. Our guide was a wonderful mix of a deep knowledge of art history and an incredible ability to connect and engage each individual on our tour.

Excellent guide, made it fun!

Laura_P, Jan 2025

Excellent guide, made it fun! Such a wonderful tour, lots of info to digest . Very easy to find location as well

Vatican Experience- memorable

ELIZABETH_M, Jan 2025

We wanted to see the Vatican for our son who attends Catholic School - and he loved learning the history. We had a great tour guide who taught us all so much! Our son had so much to share when he returned to school!

Our tour guide, John, was...

Elizabeth_S, Jan 2025

Our tour guide, John, was absolutely phenomenal!! This is a great tour & is definitely worth the time.

So much to learn!

Julie_P, Jan 2025

Love it! It was my first experience at the Vatican and it was breath taking! Awesome time with friends.

Our tour guide was...

Catherine_D, Jan 2025

Our tour guide was exceptional! She was very insightful as we made our way through the Vatican, Chapel, and Basilica. I highly recommend this tour.

Excellent!

Aimee_S, Jan 2025

We loved the easy skip-the-line access. Our guide provided such great background knowledge that made the visit so much more meaningful. Without his expertise, I think we would have just walked through and admired the pretty art. His expertise allowed us to get a better understanding of what we saw and why it was important. I can’t imagine visiting the Vatican without this sort of support.!

Be ready to walk, tour...

Nakia_W, Jan 2025

Be ready to walk, tour guide was very knowledgeable. Appreciate how she took the time to answer all questions & explain everything.

Eugene was an excellent...

Melissa_B, Jan 2025

Eugene was an excellent guide. Very easy to fine meet up point. Great tour! Very informative! We had a great time.

Fantastic tour

Cathy_S, Jan 2025

Mario was a fantastic tour guide. His stories really brought the experience to life. I would definitely recommend this tour.

Navigating the Crowds

Gordon_N, Jan 2025

It was a great way to get around the crowds being guided. The guide helped us see what was most important.

Not bad

Denzel_B, Jan 2025

Good to see but the tour was loooong. It went past the time they said it would which is fine for some but I think it would have been better for the guide to set the expectation that way people can plan accordingly. We were 45 min over time and the guide still hadn’t finished. Nice lady, just really long.

Response from Host, Jan 2025

Thank you so much for taking the time to write us your thoughts, much appreciated! Yes, there are days when the tours can run over a few minutes, our expert guides do their utmost to keep within the specified running time of the itineraries but if the museums are particularly busy, it can occasionally take us a little longer to get through. Glad you enjoyed the company of your guide though! Pips

Wonderfully run tour was the highlight of our trip to Rome!

Mary_R, Jan 2025

Our guided tour for the Vatican and Sistine Chapel, taken with What A Life Tours thru Viator, was fantastico! Our tour guide Gabriel was excellent and the tour was very worth what we paid for it. We were in Rome during the off season, but even so, lines to get into the Vatican were unbelievably long - thanks to the skip the line tickets that came with the tour, we just sailed right in, saving perhaps 1-2 hours of our day. Gabriel was very knowledgeable and his passion for sharing the Vatican's history and art was very apparent in his presentation to the group. He was very solicitous of my mobility issues and several times went out of his way to make sure I had time to catch up to the group or arranged an alternative path for me inside the museums to allow easier access to certain areas. After the official tour ended, he even stayed behind and made sure my husband and I received a special blessing on our marriage and our health. We were very impressed with him and appreciated his helpful attitude, not to mention how he infused a little humor when telling us how certain sculptors and artists signed their works. We will most definitely recommend both Gabriel and What a Life Tours to friends visiting Rome!! Grazie mille for such a wonderful day!

It was an amazing tour....

Andrea_T, Jan 2025

It was an amazing tour. Beautiful sites and small group. Our guide, Eugene from What a Life Tours was fabulous and provided a lot of information and shared a lot of interesting stories and facts. If you can request a guide do it - you wont regret it.

Definitely worth it!

GANESH_S, Jan 2025

Definitely worth it! Tour lasted around 3 hrs and 15 min. John, our tour guide was a wealth of information and made the entire tour enjoyable! Doing it as part of a small group also helped as we were able to engage well and get our questions answered. Highly recommend it!

Jeannette made this experience.

Jessica_G, Jan 2025

We came to Rome to see the Colosseum, but that's not enough to fill a weekend, so we added this tour. Our tour guide, Jeanette, made this experience fun and interesting. Her love of art history added depth. Plus, she was hilarious. (FYI my family shares her heritage, so I may be more amendable to her humor). I have a few friends visiting in the next couple of months and have told them to reach out to her company and request her.

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