The Vatican City Tour starts with the guided tour of the Vatican Museums, which contain the papal collection of antiquities and artworks collected over the centuries at the behest of the Popes.
We will enter to the Vatican Museums from the main entrance, in Viale Vaticano, which has been realized for the Jubilee of the 2000.
After a visit to the Pius-Clementine Museum, we will continue the museum tour by crossing the Cortile della Pigna.
Then, we could admire the Chiaramonti Museum and its hundreds of statue made by the famous painter and sculptor Antonio Canova.
The tour will continue in the Octagonal Courtyard, which contains many masterpieces from Canova and Michelangelo. Then, crossing the Hall of the Animals and the Hall of the Muses, we will find the famous Belvedere Torso and the Round Room.
The guided tour will continue through the monumental entrance of the Greek Cross Room and, on the second floor, with the visit to the Upper Galleries: the Gallery of the Candelabra, the Gallery of the Tapestries and the Gallery of Maps.
The Vatican City Tour will continue, inside the Vatican Museums, to the marvelous Sistine Chapel.
The simple but powerful architecture maintains most of the original decoration, made by an elite group of painters from various schools, such as Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, who painted episodes of the life of Moses and Jesus on the central sections of the wall.
To finish, Michelangelo’s decorations on the ceiling, with scenes from the book of Genesis, and the whirling Universal Judgment, painted 30 years later on the high altar wall.
Before we go out, we will admire for the last time the vault, where Adam receives the spirit of life from the Lord.
The St. Peter’s Basilica will be the last stop of our tour of the Vatican City. We will start the St. Peter’s tour from the point of the origin of all the Vatican complex: the tomb of Saint Peter, the stone on which the first basilica was built, to the will of the emperor Constantine in 326.
Before we enter the Atrium, we may observe the huge Square of Saint Peter’s, surrounded by Bernini’s colonnade, and the Obelisk.
Then, we will enter the Basilic, starting from the right nave: behind the walled Porta Santa (Holy Door), we will find the “Pietà”, the masterpiece by a young Michelangelo. Continuing the visit we will find, on the right, the burials of the Popes recently canonized.
At the end of the Vatican Tour, we will go back along the left nave to exit the Saint Peter’s Basilica.
The Vatican City Tour can continue to the Raphael Rooms, which were decorated from the artist himself by the order of Pope Julius II.
We will visit the Raphael Rooms starting from the newest one, the Hall of Constantine, and we will continue the guided tour by passing through the Room of Heliodorus, which is decorated with wall paintings about God protecting his Church from many dangers, until arriving to the Room of the Signatura, where one of the most famous painting of Raphael is treasured: the wonderful “School of Athens”, which represents the most celebrated thinkers and philosophers of ancient times.
