Well, having waited too long, I can't seem to find a way to go inexpensively into the Vatican Museums. We are arriving on Friday 8 June at 0840. We would like to go either then or Saturday. What is meant by a long line. 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, more? Clearly, no one can predict, but in general what have people's experience been?

Morning lines can be really big, like 2 hours. I've heard that going in the afternoon can pretty much eliminate the lines.

It may still be possible for you to book a reservation for Saturday through one of the tour agencies that do the 8-10am reservations. You can find them by searching the forum.

While it is late, I'd go ahead and try sending the Vatican a fax. What the heck, you may luck up and get it. It would probably have to be for Saturday, but you could request Friday afternoon too.

dave

Yes when traveling with a driver we saw the long long lines getting into the vatican. Our driver said that is a 2 hour line to get in. We did St Peters and a few other things, had lunch and then went back and no line at all about 1 in the afternoon

Go at lunch time.No line.

<Go at lunch time. No line.>
Not true! We were there just before 12 noon and stood in line for about one and a half hour (March 2007).

before noon isn't "lunch time" - more like 1-2 p.m. and later. The point is go in the afternoon and there will be much shorter lines.

Myriam,

Please don't say "not true"!, like I'm telling a lie .

When I say lunch hour, I mean lunch hour in Italy which is typically after 1PM. "When you got to Rome do as the Romans do".

when we arrived before opening time in early March we had to stand in line for 45 mins to an hour. We did notice no lines in the early afternoon as people have described.
In addition to trying to avoid lines you should think about how much time you want to spend in the museums. If you want to see the Raphael rooms and Sistine chapel plus other sections of the vast collection you might easily find 2 to 3 hours seems too short. the closing time is 4:45 for your dates in June, but I assume they will start trying to clear the museums before that.

I went to Italy for a weekend in October 2005.My plan was to see St Peters again and visit the Vatican museum. The line for the roof elevator was over an hour (but worth it) and it took over 3 hours to get into the Vatican museum.I would love to vist the museum again but that line was ridiculous. They did not take credit cards either and the restaurant food in the museum was quite ordinary.

We went October of last year and the line to get into St. Peter's snaked around in a very long line, we settled in prepared for an extremely long wait and were pleasantly surprised it took less than an hour to get through. We waited again for the Vatican museums, that line wrapped around many blocks from the entrance and took us about an hour right about 11:00, as we were coming out at 1:30ish there was absolutely ZERO line. We wished we had done something else for a few hours and then gone back later. We did get to view Rome's finest knock-off bags and camera tri-pod selections while we waited, until a policeman came and miraculously those bags disappeared into blankets and scattered.