St Peter’s Basilica
Theoretically, you can visit both St Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican museums in one visit…in fact many tours include them both, however, we didn’t get to the Vatican until the afternoon so we returned to St Peter’s the next day. The upshot of this? Dedicate a whole day to this amazing place…even though the tours will only take a few hours there is so much to see and so much walking, including 323 steps up to the top of the dome if you choose that option, that you shouldn’t try to fit in anything else.
We chose to go the Vatican alone, purchasing ‘skip the line’ tickets via our hop on bus company. On arrival though, we found this had been unnecessary as there was no line (it is winter) and the price we paid was much higher than at the gate. Still we were able to move swiftly through all the galleries, you could take hours if you like, to reach the Sistine Chapel. There are 15km of corridors in the museum, even the short route is long. The chapel is as amazing as you would think…take a while to just sit and contemplate this masterpiece.
St Peter’s Basilica is another story…the lines here are legendary…even in winter the wait for security was 3 hours we decided to purchase a guided tour via the Viator online booking system. This was easy and the operator was happy to accept an evoucher on a mobile device…no need to worry about printing. There ended up being only 3 people in our group. The guide was passionate and spent a lot of time pointing out the many interesting highlights of the chapel. Another guide took us to the top of the dome, she too was enthusiastic and helpful…it was well worth the money. We have seen some beautiful churches around the world but this was easily the grandest…don’t miss it.
Categories: City Breaks, europe
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