Yet another Vatican museum/Scavi tour question
 

We have reserved Scavi tour tickets for Friday, May 20 at 3:15pm. The response time was fantastic--only 5 hours! My question is this: we (my husband and I and another couple) want to also tour the Vatican Museum and Sistine chapel on the same day, as well as St. Peter's Basilica. We are aware that we will have visual and information overload, but our schedule does not permit any more than one day for this. What would be an optimal time to reserve tickets for the Vatican Museum and Sistine chapel? We were thinking about going around 11:30 or 12:00, but would that give us enough time? We tend not to take tours, but are thinking that a Context or similar tour may be better in this instance. Would this give us enough time to see St. Peter's while there is still daylight, or is it more magical in twilight?

A little background about us--we are not all big museum fans, especially the husbands. That's why I was thinking the Context tour might give us the "highlights" in a couple of hours; otherwise we would literally breeze through the Vatican museum to get to the Sistine chapel. I am planning a few breaks for the guys to feed and water them to keep them going all day.

In your opinions, would you do a self-tour of the Vatican museum or go on a guided tour, given our time constraints?

Thanks in advance.

I'd do a guided tour in the morning, then a leisurely lunch at 1:00. You'll want to head toward the Scavi office a bit before 3:00--just at the end of Roman lunch hour.

bella - i would reserve tickets for the vatican for 10 am at the latest - that will give you a decent 3 hours so you don't feel too rushed.

you may well want to put your feet up, at least metaphorically, before you do the scavi tour in the pm.

Thanks for your replies.

Hey Bellarosa - what time was your morning tour in the end and how did your timing work out? Any recommendations for us? We also have a 3:15 Scavi tour and I'm trying to figure out what time our morning tour should be. Did you go with Context? How was it?

Hi,
Do they tell you to bring passports or proof of age for the tour? My son will miss being 15 years old by 5 days. Do you all think he will have a problem if we have purchased a ticket or would they make my son not go through the tour? Thanks for sharing your experience or ideas.
Roxie

Why not just take his passport with you, roxie? use a money belt to carry it if you're worried about security.

On a cruise stop, had to do Sistine Chapel, St. P and Scavi Tour in really a mad rush as it was not our first time for the Chapel and St. P, so it was OK.

My 2cents worth: we got Sistine Chapel tickets online for the first tour of the day. There are 2 routes you can take. #1 leads you around for about 1.5 hours and you end up at the Sistine Chapel. #2 is a shortcut to the Chapel.

Get the first tour of the day and do tour #2. If you are lucky like us, we were the only ones there, except for the guard for about 15 minutes. Magical, spiritual, wonderful, glorious! Otherwise the room will be PACKED.

You then can go back to the start of #1, do St. Peters, a leisurely lunch as mentiioned above, then the Scavi. What a great day. Ciao!