The Best of the Vatican and Sistine Chapel

The Vatican Museums, with its hallowed halls and galleries lined with world-famous priceless artefacts, antiquities, and art, is also home to works by the two Renaissance maestros and rivals Raphael and Michaelangelo.
Your highlights tour of the Vatican Museums will whisk you through the galleries, ensuring you see the most renowned pieces. You will see the Belvedere Courtyard with the Appollo Belvedere and Laocoön sculptures, explore the Gallery of Tapestries with designs of the life of Christ by Raphael, and the exquisitely frescoed Gallery of the Maps.
You'll hear all about the life and papacy of Pope Julius II, who commissioned Raphael to paint his private apartments and Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Ceiling. Your guide will show you the Raphael Rooms with the School of Athens fresco that would set a new standard in the art world, followed finally by the truly awe-inspiring and magnificent Sistine Chapel with those astounding frescoes painted by Michelangelo in his thirties and later in his sixties.
Duration: 2.5 hours