My husband and I will be traveling to Italy in April 2012 and will be visiting Rome. I have read in many of the guide books that sometimes the lines to the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St. Peters, etc. are crazy long and time consuming. Has anyone been on a guided tour or something - anything that cuts down on lines? Is there a pass you can buy before hand that will let you skip lines?? I've tried looking online but do not know what reputable sites are out there - Can you help me with any suggestions???

You can buy tickets directly from the Vatican site, though I have no personal experience with this. They have several options.

http://biglietteriamusei.vatican.va/musei/tickets/do

To get to the Sistine Chapel, you have to go through the museums, so by necessity it will take you awhile. There's no separate line - just follow the crowds and signs. We did not pre-purchase tickets to the museums and waited in line about 40 minutes - this was on a Monday afternoon in early May. Your wait times may vary.

The line at St. Peter's is the security line; there's no charge to get in. One way to skip it (maybe the only way, I'm not sure) is to book the Scavi tour, which is great in and of itself. This takes you on a guided tour through the excavations underneath the basilica. You end at a restricted entrance to the St. Peter's crypt, follow the crowd through the crypt, and then continue behind the security barrier to the front door of St. Peter's. The tour guide does not go with you into St. Peter's.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/in...040112_en.html

To get to the Sistine Chapel, you have to go through the museums, so by necessity it will take you awhile. There's no separate line - just follow the crowds and signs.>

when I was there there were signs for folks who wanted to head to the Sistine Chapel and not wanting to traipse thru all the many rooms of the museum so if Sistine is all that is on your mind you can take some kind of bypass the museum route - at least a few years back you could. But there is a lot of great stuff in the sprawling museum!

There are signs like this EVERYwhere, always with the chapel on top, but they just direct you in the general direction of the chapel via the rest of the museums. I didn't <i>notice</i> any "shortcut" signs, at least, though if you follow the signs you definitely don't have to go through every single room. (Somehow we missed the Egyptian room. Oops.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenthom...57626808138126

thanks jent - I just remembered seeing the signs and I went thru every room and regretted doing so because by the time I got to the Chapel it was close to closing time and did not have enough time to sit there and ponder the fantastic walls and ceilings - at that time it closed at 2pm or so but I think visiting hours have been exteneded.

In my experience, even following the "direct" route route to the Sistine Chapel is an almost 10-minute walk through a series of long halls of artworks. It is possible to totally avoid a number of the museums that constitute the Vatican "Museums". Depending on the time of year and crowds expected, I've found that the most direct route I've experienced is cordoned off to reroute the crowds through even more rooms, therefore making the actual line to the Sistine Chapel shorter (or longer, depending on how you look at it).

We just returned from Rome and went to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. You can either wait in line....for a VERY long time, or you can pre-purchase your tickets and go at your own speed or take a guided tour.

We purchased our tickets online from www.tickitaly.com. We bought our tickets for both the Colesseum and Vatican/Sistine Chapel this way. We were already in Rome, went online and got tickets for the next day for the Colesseum and two days later for the Vatican.

I was worried that we may not be able to buy tickets and would have to stand in line instead since we waited so long, but it worked out GREAT.

At both the Colesseum and Vatican/Sistine Chapel, if you have purchased tickets online, you print out your confirmation and bring it to the reservation window to pick up the tickets. You WON'T have to wait in the long lines at all. We went directly in to both. In fact we had 11:30am reservations at the Vatican and got there at 10:30am. We were still able to go right in.

I would suggest finding out from your hotel if there is a private guided tour if you really want to get the most information from your visit. Our hotel could arrange for a private tour and when you book this way you "jump the line" as well and get to go directly in.

We opted not to do a tour only because we were travelling with a 13 yr old and 11 yr old who don't mosey along as slow as we adults do.

The St Peters tour mentioned above sounds great...wish I'd known about that one. We accidently jumped the line for St. Peters. I was trying to read the sign (was looking for the entrance for the Vatican), and ended up going into St. Peters. I was very glad we got in the wrong line, it was BEAUTIFUL!!

I wouldn't use tickitaly for the Vatican as they just resell the Vatican's own tickets/services at a higher price. Why pay a 3rd party when you can book it yourself with the Vatican?

Tickitaly entrance price - 25.50€ (not sure if they charge a mailing fee or reservation fee).
Vatican website price 15€ +4€ reservation fee

The Vatican offers several of their own tours. You can return to the museums after your tour if you wish. The Vatican Garden tour, during some seasons, is only offered once per day in English.
http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/z-In...zi_Visite.html

This is all GREAT info!! Thanks everybody!!! What about the ancient Rome sites. Is it worth doing a tour and purchasing tickets early??

I didn't notice any "shortcut" signs, at least, though if you follow the signs you definitely don't have to go through every single room. (Somehow we missed the Egyptian room. Oops.)>>

we DID see the signs to the chapel, but it still took us hours to get there - and we ended up going round the Egyptian rooms TWICE.

it had not occurred to me that they might change the routing - if they deliberately sent us they way we went it didn't work as they just created bottle necks. it was a truly exhausting experience.

annhig, that's funny. I realized somewhere down the hall that we'd missed the Egyptian room, but neither of us cared enough to try to fight our way back!

LThompson, I'm assuming you mean the Colosseum and the Forum? If I had plenty of funds available, I'd get a guide for both. We took the guided tour of the Colosseum which includes the dungeon levels (we did book that through Tickitaly - the markup isn't as high on those, from what I can tell), and it was great. Our tickets were &euro;27 each. We had no guide besides my Blue Guide book for the Forum, and basically just wandered around. That was the one place I wished I'd either budgeted for a guide or done much more research before we went - we had no idea exactly what we were seeing. We did happen to overhear someone else's guide pointing out the House of the Vestals, at least!

Have you read Ron in Rome's Blog? We did a tour with him of other parts of Rome (no longer available) but used the tips on his blog to visit the Vatican

His article 20 tips on visiting the vatican is worth a read.
http://www.roninrome.com/sites-and-a...1#comment-9561

You can buy tickets/tours for the Colosseum on Pierreci and download audio tours. You have to scroll to the bottom.
http://www.pierreci.it/en/museums-an.../colosseo.aspx
http://www.pierreci.it/en/museums-an...ro-romano.aspx

You can get Rick Steve's walking tours on Itunes(free). For the forum and colosseum, he also has maps on Itunes.
http://www.ricksteves.com/news/trave.../audiotour.htm

jent103:

I was snooping around for info on (you guessed it) Vatican tours... anyway, I clicked on your photostream link, and your Rome Day 2 pictures are beautiful! I think I will continue snooping around your Italy photos if you dont mind

Thanks a ton for posting that link! I have been searching for "real world photos" of Rome and such for quite some time!

Thank you so much, Ready! Snoop away. You can find all of them here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenthom...7626683520763/

i suggest the following strategies:

1. buy advance tickets to the vatican museums on line through the official website. follow roninRome's guide to the museums and the shortcut into St. Peter's from the sistine chapel to avoid the queue into St. Peter's.

2. book places on the scavi tour - again, through the vatican website. there is no queue to get in - you have a timed ticket for a specific tour - and once the tour is over, you can simply walk into st. Peter's.

3. get up early. when we were intending to go up to the dome of St. Peter's we arrived before 9.15am - and there was hardly anyone there so we whizzed through security. an hour or so later, the queues were right across the piazza in front of the Basilica.

jent103; Do you recall where this picture was taken www.flickr.com/photos/jenthompson/5763428123/ ?

I'm assuming on the upper level that is normally closed-off?
Because you mention a guide and women, the upper level (nose-bleed seats) was where woman and slaves were required to sit.

That metal bracket has me baffled and I wonder if you could narrow down its location (upper level?, corridor?, near outside wall?, was the hole deep/shallow?, anything?).

I plan on posting on an archaeological and ancient history group to see if anyone knows it purpose and age (ancient original, Medieval, later).
Thanks...Regards, Walter

Hi Walter - it was on the dungeon level of the Colosseum, in the floor, I think in one of the corridors. The guide explained them but I was distracted and unfortunately didn't catch the entire explanation. I think the women in this case were more along the lines of prostitutes/escorts for the gladiators, rather than spectators. What I caught sounded like the women were "numbered" and the gladiators chose them somehow using the numbers on the metal there. I could be wrong on all of that, though! I'm not sure how deep the hole was, but it was not very large in diameter - maybe eight inches or so, at a very rough guess.

Have just booked the Scavi tour for our Rome visit in November. It is at 3:15 pm and I hope this gives ample time to explore St. Peter's afterward.

Still trying to figure out if I need to reserve the Vatican/Sistine Chapel at that time of year. I probably will just to be sure.

For the Colosseum I am likewise waiting to see if the Underground tour is going to be available in November. No word yet on that.

I would imagine that the OP's visit in April will have similar reservation issues to mine in November.

We are going to Italy in October so I can't tell you what our experience is yet, but I can tell you that we booked a night tour of the Sistine Chapel. It sounds lovely so that is another idea for you to look into.
Enjoy the planning!
Gypsygurl