James J. Griffin

Review of Musei Vaticani-Dipertimento di...

This was a crush of people. We opted to take one o...

This was a crush of people. We opted to take one of the "Skip the line" tour guide companies up on their offer. It was expensive (41 euros each) but ultimately worth it. The tour guides allow you to exit the Sistine Chapel directly into the basilica. Without that tour guide you have to queue back up to see St. Peters. That would have been easily another two hours based on when were there. I did feel like the hour long tour breezed past too much, but I can understand there were just too many people. It's obviously easy to spend several days at the Vatican before you can see everything. The tour guide tour really does focus on the chapel and glosses over a lot of what else is there unfortunately. Plus the groups were large enough to be unwieldy. All in all, if you have the time, do it on your own, but if your short on time, go ahead and buy your way out of line.