My husband and I have seen the Sistine Chapel twice but we never toured any other part of the Vatican museums.

I'm not big on tour groups but was wondering if anyone could recommend an enjoyable tour or less talked about area of the museum collection...maybe even one that includes apartments or private gardens etc..

We're going in January for 10 days.

Context Rome is a great tour company that conducts small group (6 people or less) tours of various Roman sites. My daughter and I really enjoyed their Vatican Museums tour. The guides are primarily academics with expertise in art, history, etc.

The Vatican itself offers tours of both the Vatican Gardens (I think it's only on Wednesdays, but check on that) and the Scavi, the crypt under St Peter's.
Context Rome is an excellent organization for any guided tour, but I'm sure their Vatican tour usually includes the Sistine Chapel; you can contact them about arranging a customized itinerary.

sandi,
I'm just curious...you say you've never toured any other part of the Vatican Museums but you've been to the Sistine Chapel twice. Since you have to walk through the Vatican Museum to even get to the Sistine Chapel do you mean you just walked straight through and skipped all the art viewing while en route to the Chapel? Or do you know of some top secret Pope only entrance to the chapel

Other Vatican tours are the Scavi, a new necropolis that I read about on this forum a few days ago, and the Vatican Gardens which is a tour only offered by the Vatican.

I walked straight to the chapel. Now on the way out we did gawk at some of the beautiful rooms but I'm referring to the art galleries and other parts of the museums. The other times, our goal was to get to the chapel as quickly as we could to try to beat the throngs of other tourists.

We went on the museum tour offered by the Vatican, and found it very enjoyable. The tour ends at the Sistine Chapel.

Woody

For those of you who've used the Vatican tour, is it given in English? I'm making the same decision now in preparations for our trip to Rome in a few weeks. I had gotten the tip about the Vatican tours on this site (thank you), and just looked up the info last night. The website doesn't specify the language, but says a guided tour and headset are included. Can I assume the headset is for translation? Here's the link:

http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/z-In...zi_Visite.html

Another question (and please excuse me if it's a dumb one -- I'm a first-timer to Rome and to this site): the Vatican tour covers the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, but doesn't mention St. Peter's or the Scavi. Can we just see these things on our own, or should we look into other tours that cover those as well and have English-speaking guides?

We just returned from Rome, where we took the Vatican English-language tour of the Vatican Museums. We found it very informative, particularly with respect to the Sistine Chapel, and interesting, but it is NOT an in-depth tour of anything. It does not include St. Peter's or the Scavi.

The tour is about 1 1/2 hour long, so it included a talk in the courtyard about the Sistine Chapel, using a large poster of various parts of the Chapel. It ended just outside the Sistine Chapel, where the tour guide collected our whisper headsets. We then viewed the Chapel on our own.

We then exited the Chapel from the "secret back door," which when we were there, was labeled only "for tour groups only." That will lead you into St. Peter's, so you get to skip the line to get into St. Peter's.

We took a ContextRome tour, "Roma Antica," which covered the Palatine Hill, the Forum and the Colosseum. We both found it very interesting and informative, and we do not usually take tours of this kind (they limit their tours to 6 people each, which is a great help). You might want to consider any of their several tours that focus on the Vatican Museums. One thing to consider, however, that we went on a Monday in October, and the place was so crowded that I couldn't imagine spending 4 hours in such a crowd. You might ask ContextRome if their tours include rooms not in the usual tourist path (I would think they would), so you're not in that crowd for the entire time.