Can't We purchase the museum tickets through the concierge at our hotel. We are staying there for the whole week? Its a first class hotel and they do have concierge services.
Rick and Brigid

You can't get advance tickets to the Vatican Museum unless you sign up for a tour. However, reservations are a must for the Borghese, which your hotel can make for you.

You can also reserve on line and pay when you get there.

To clarify - I meant the Borghese.

We reserved for the Borghese ahead of time for our October trip but they did have vacancies available. Depending on when you are going, reservations may not be necessary. To be safe, make them but then if it doesn't look to crowded when you get there, don't tell them you have a reservation and save yourself the reservation fee.

When I was at the Borghese last june they were very strict about the reservation policy. We reserved thru our hotel.

The Borghese gets a lot of traffic during the "tourist season." At other times my experience has been that you can reserve a day ahead and sometimes just show up and they have vacancies.
I would e-mail the hotel and ask them to reserve for you...usually they'll do that but will probably want your CC number to do so.
Have a great trip.

You'll pay more for the tickets if you book through the concierge. Its cheaper to book them yourself. You just make a reservation online and then you pay for the tickets and a small 1 Euro fee when you get to the museum. As for the Borghese, even if you have reservations they may or may not be open on the day that you go. You might want to call and verify that they are actually going to be open when you get there. They were closed for some unannounced meeting the afternoon we were suppose to go.

rbscire ~

Please, please, please do not pass up the National Roman Museum, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. This museum houses an astounding collection of statues and frescos. It is closed on Mondays, tickets do not need to be purchased in advance, it is rarely crowded, easy to get to (near Termini station), and has a wonderful audio guide. Don't forget to sign up for the fresco tour.

This museum houses two of my favorite statues - The Boxer and Niobide. Last September, The Boxer on loan to the Colosseum as part of an Olympics' display.

Here's an excerpt from my trip report:

I spent nearly one hour looking for the Museo Nazionale Romana. I keep stopping to ask people where the museum is and I am told that all of the buildings surrounding the Piazza Della Republica are part of the museo. I searched and searched for the entrance. I finally stopped at a souvenir stand and the man points me in the right direction. I realize that I had missed it because I was looking for a queue of people waiting to get in. There is no queue.

This is a fantastic museo. I rent an audio guide, which puts the Archeological Museo in Napoli to shame. This museo consists of three floors and a basement. The audio guide starts on the ground floor and takes me through Roman history chronologically. I work my way counterclockwise and upward.

I start out in sala I, which contains several portrait busts dating from 500 b.c. I move through the rooms and view statues of Julius Caesar, Augustus, and other Roman emperors, their wives, their siblings. The audio guide gives the history of the works and points out interesting details.

The Greek influence is also displayed. There are statues of Socrates and Alexander the Great. And then there are the Greek originals. I read about Niobide sometime ago. Seeing it in person was almost overwhelming. This is such a beautiful statue. Niobide has fallen onto one knee. She is twisting in pain, reaching for the (missing) arrow that has been shot into her back. Her clothing has fallen away, only to cover a thigh. Her stone skin is supple and I wonder if I touch it, will it give away like flesh? Superb! There is no man here to encourage me to touch this work of art. So, I resist the temptation and simply stand in awe.

Upstairs, I move through the rooms and come upon a large statue of Hadrian. This is the first statue that I have seen of a Roman sporting a beard. The audio guide patiently explains to me that Hadrian was the first emperor to bring beard wearing into vogue. Next to Hadrian is his wife and his boyfriend Antinous. Vague memories of an A&E special dedicated to the more titillating aspects of emperordom come to mind. Was Antinous really this beautiful? Or, did Hadrian order statues made in his honor to reflect the beauty that he saw in this boy?

In the room of the sarcophagi there is a middle-aged Italian woman yelling at someone on her cellphone. Her shrill voice echoes off of the walls and slabs of stone. She is wearing a badge, so she is an employee. She continues to yell and I wonder if she's related to Alberto. I keep giving her dirty looks. She finally moves to another room and continues her telephone call.

And now here is Hermaphrodite who is laying on her side, stretched to nearly full length. She is very pretty, but did "hermaphrodite" have a different meaning in ancient times? I circle around to the other side of the statue. No, I see now that hermaphrodite is both male and female. Beautiful and scary at the same time.

I go up one floor to take the tour of unbelievably beautiful frescoes and mosaics. I thought that mosaics that I saw in Archeological Museo and Pompei were fantastic, but these take my breath away. The mosaics are made up of the smallest pieces of tile. I am fascinated by the craft. There are recreations of entire rooms with the frescos displayed as they were in the villas that they were removed from.

There is a machine on the floor of one room and I ask the museum guide what it is. She tells me that it is supposed to monitor the temperature and humidity, but it has been broken for a couple of years. I ask if anyone is concerned about that. She shrugs, no they have survived thousands of years, and they will survive a thousand more. I wonder about that.

One of the women in this group is an American. She keeps asking a lot of questions about the technical aspects of the frescos. The paint, the application, the drying time. I see the same reaction from the guide that I got at Pompei. I am learning that guides do not like a lot of questions. I keep my mouth shut and listen, this lady is asking all the right questions, so I do not have to. Good, let someone else piss off the guides today.

One of the best things about the Nazionale Museo Romana is that there are very few tourists. The entire time that I have been inside, I have seen no more than 20 other people that did not work at the museo. After five hours in the museo I finally leave without seeing the currency collection in the basement. A reason to return in the future.