The Vatican Pinacoteca

The Vatican Museum's Pinacoteca is the best painting gallery in all of Rome

Caravaggio's Deposition in the Vatican Museums' Pinacoteca.

Vatican Pinacoteca
Viale Vaticano (on the north side of the Vatican City walls, between where Via Santamaura and the Via Tunisi staircase hit Viale Vaticano; about a 5–10 minute walk around the walls from St. Peter's).
tel. +39-06-6988-4947
www.vatican.va
Open Mon–Sat 9am–6pm (last entry: 4pm)
Also open the last Sun of each month 9:30am–2pm—and it's free!... and terribly crowded
For other closed dates, see "tips" below
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Viator.com tours
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums Walking Tour including Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Rooms and St Peter's
• Skip the Line: Vatican in One Day
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums Tickets
• Private Viewing of the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums
• Private Tour: Vatican Museums Walking Tour
• Private Tour: Vatican Museums and St Peter's Art History Walking Tour
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel Tour
• Skip the Line: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica Half-Day Walking Tour

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One of the top painting galleries in Rome has so many masterpieces they nearly crowd one another out on the walls in room after room of Old Master genius.

I'm serious; in the artistic overload of going from Giotto to Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Raphael, you end up merely skimming over works by Pietro Lorenzetti, Fra' Angelico, Titian, Pinturicchio, and Bellini, any one of which would be the prize of a lesser collection.

Among the major masterpieces are Giotto's Stefaneschi Triptych (1320), a Perugino Madonna and Child with Saints (1496), Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished St. Jerome (1482), Guido Reni's Crucifixion of St. Peter (1605), and Caravaggio's Deposition from the Cross (1604).

Trasfigurazione di Raffaelo nei Musei Vaticani
Raphael's Transfiguration.Paintings by Simone Martini, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filippo Lippi, Melozzo da Forlì, Veronese, and Il Guercino round out the A-list of top Renaissance and baroque artists represented here.

But the most famous name here has go to be Raphael, the subject of the Pinacoteca's Room VIII, where you'll find his Coronation of the Virgin (1503) and Madonna of Foligno (1511) surrounded by the Flemish-woven tapestries executed to the master's designs.

All that is just set decoration around the main act. In the center of the room hangs the young Renaissance master's greatest masterpiece, Raphael's Transfiguration (1520).

This 13.5-foot-high study in color and light was discovered almost finished in the artist's studio when he died suddenly at the age of 37, and mourners carried it through the streets of Rome during his funeral procession.

The Vatican Museums
Pinacoteca (Painting Gallery)
Papal Apartments
     Raphael Rooms
    Borgia Apartments
    Chapel of Nicholas V
Sistine Chapel
Pio-Clementine Museum
Modern Religious Art
Chiaramonti/New Wing
Gregorian Egyptian Museum
Gregorian Etruscan Museum
Gregorian Profane Museum
Pio Christian Museum
Missionary-Ethnological Museum
Vatican Gardens

Tips

Planning your day: The Pinacoteca should take 45–90 minutes, depending on how much of an art fan you are. Spend all day at the Vatican. Two days if you can swing it. Even on a tight schedule, expect to pretty much spend one full day seeing the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's together. They're worth it. Warning: The ticket office closes 2 hours before the museum, with the last entry at 4pm.
The Vatican Museums are most crowded on Sundays ('cause they're free) and many Wednesdays ('cause in the morning St. Peter's itself is often closed for the papal audience in the piazza, so everyone who doesn't have tickets walks around the walls to kill time inside the museums, and by afternoon all the audience-goers join them).
Book ahead: You can book entry tickets ahead of time at www.vatican.va to help avoid the lines, which can last for up to an hour or so in the summer. However, this adds a €4 fee to the already steep admission of €15.
Leonardo da Vinci's St. Jerome in the Vatican Pinacoteca.Book a Vatican tour: There are two-hour tours of the museums and Sistine Chapel available (in English usually at 10:30am) for €30–€35 per person. For more info: tel. +39-06-6988-3145 or www.vatican.va. If you prefer a private guided tour of the Vatican and its museums, book one via our partner site Viator.com.

     • Skip the Line: Vatican Museums Walking Tour including Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Rooms and St Peter's
     • Skip the Line: Vatican in One Day
     • Skip the Line: Vatican Museums Tickets
     • Private Tour: Vatican Museums Walking Tour
     • Private Viewing of the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums
     • Private Tour: Vatican Museums and St Peter's Art History Walking Tour
     • Skip the Line: Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel Tour
     • Skip the Line: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica Half-Day Walking Tour
The Vatican Museums are closed Sundays—except on the last Sunday of the month...
The Vatican Museums are free on the last Sunday of each month, when they are intensely crowded and stay open until 2pm (last entry: 12:30pm). They're also free on Sept. 27 (World Tourism Day). If the Sunday falls on a church holiday, however, they're closed (see next tip).
The Vatican Museums are closed on all church holidays: Jan. 1, Jan. 6, Feb. 11, Mar. 19, Easter Sunday and Monday, May 1, May 21, June 11, June 29 (Feast of St. Peter and Paul—major Roman holiday), Aug. 14–15 (everything is closed in Rome on Aug. 15; head to Santa Maria Maggiore for mass with a "snowfall" of rose petals), Nov. 1, Dec. 8, Dec. 25 (Merry Christmas!), Dec. 26 (Santo Stefano—huge in Italy).
Note that the Vatican Museums close surprisingly early (last entry 4pm, doors close 6pm). So see them first, then walk around the walls to visit St. Peter's.
Dress code?: Recently, the Vatican (or at least some guards) seems to have decided that you must dress "appropriately" to visit any part of Vatican City—including the museums—and not just St. Peter's, where a dress code has long applied. Err on the side of caution and make sure you arrive with no bare shoulders, knees or midriffs. (If it's hot and you want to wear a tank top around town that day, just bring a light shawl to cover your shoulders while inside; on packing the right items for an Italy trip.)
How to get to the Vatican Museums: Cipro-Musei Vaticani is the closest Metro stop (on the A line, about 7 blocks northwest of the entrance; just follow the crowds). Otherwise, bus 49 stops right in front of the museum entrance (you can catch it from Piazza Cavour, or anywhere along Via Cescenzio, which passes the very northern tip of the piazza around Castel Sant'Angelo)

All the Vatican Museums
St. Peter's Basilica - Capital of Christendom
A Caravaggio tour of Rome
Museums in Rome
Churches in Rome
An audience with the Pope
More sights in the Vatican Borgo neighborhood

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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

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The Vatican Pinacoteca

The Vatican Museum's Pinacoteca is the best painting gallery in all of Rome

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