Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel: Getting Past the Queue and Into the Room

The Sistine Chapel is the private chapel of the Pope and the location where the Conclave meets to elect a new pontiff. It is not a public church. Access is through the Vatican Museums, which means you pay for the museums (EUR 17 online, EUR 21 at the door, 2024 pricing) and the chapel is the final room on the standard tour route. Booking online is straightforward and eliminates the walk-up queue, which can be 90-120 minutes during summer.

The standard Vatican Museums visit - even moving at a brisk pace - takes 2-3 hours to reach the Sistine Chapel from the entrance. The Galleria delle Carte Geografiche (Gallery of Maps), just before the chapel, is 120m long and is itself one of the more extraordinary interiors in Rome. Build time for it.

What you’re looking at

Michelangelo painted the ceiling between 1508 and 1512 under commission from Pope Julius II. The nine central panels show scenes from Genesis, from God separating light from darkness at the altar end to Noah drunk in his tent at the entrance. The Creation of Adam is in the central section, fourth panel from the altar. Michelangelo was not happy about the commission - he considered himself a sculptor, not a fresco painter - and fought with Julius throughout the project. The quality of the execution suggests whatever his personal feelings, the work was taken seriously.

The Last Judgement on the altar wall was commissioned by Clement VII and painted between 1534 and 1541, more than 20 years after the ceiling. The style is different: darker, more crowded, less optimistic. The figure of St. Bartholomew in the lower right holding his own flayed skin is commonly thought to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo. The figure of Charon herding souls into hell (bottom right) comes directly from Dante’s Inferno.

The side walls have frescoes by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and Signorelli, painted in the 1480s. They are less discussed but worth looking at: the scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ have significant paintings from the early Renaissance period that would be the main attraction of any other building.

Conditions inside

Photography is prohibited (enforced with variable strictness by the guards). Silence is requested and intermittently maintained. The room is large but the visitor numbers are high enough that movement is constrained. The benches along the side walls allow you to sit and look at the ceiling for several minutes - take advantage of this. Standing in the centre craning upward is uncomfortable for more than a few minutes.

Vatican Museums logistics

The museum entrance is a 10-15 minute walk from St. Peter’s Square. Early morning slots (08:00-09:00) are less crowded. The final exit from the Sistine Chapel leads directly to St. Peter’s Basilica via a door that is only open in the morning - this saves retracing through the museum. If you enter Vatican Museums from the north entrance and exit via the Sistine Chapel into St. Peter’s, you avoid the long walk back.

St. Peter’s dome climb (EUR 8 for the stairs, EUR 10 for elevator to the first level then stairs, about 400 steps to the top) gives the best view of Rome if weather is clear.