Vatican Pio-Clementino Museum

The Vatican's Pio-Clementino Museum is one of Rome's best collections of ancient Greek and Roman statues

The Laocoön group in the Vatican Museums. (Photo by Jastrow)

Vatican Museums—Pio-Clementino Museum
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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This is the best of the Vatican's several ancient Greek and Roman sculpture collections.

In the octagonal Belvedere Courtyard—the original core of the Vatican museums—you'll find the famed Laocoön group, a 1st-century BC tangle of a man and his two children losing a struggle with giant snakes (their fate for warning the Trojans about the Greeks’ tricky wooden horse).

Belvedere TorsoNearby is the Apollo Belvedere, an ancient Roman copy of a 4th-century BC Greek original that for centuries continued to define the ideal male body. As late as the baroque era, a young Bernini was basing his own Apollo in the Borghese Gallery on this one.

In the long Room of the Muses you'll find the muscular Belvedere Torso, a 1st-century BC fragment of another Hercules statue that Renaissance artists like Michelangelo studied to learn how the ancients captured so well the human physique.

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 Pio-Clementino takes about 20–40 minutes to stroll through, but expect to 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.
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)

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

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Vatican Pio-Clementino Museum

The Vatican's Pio-Clementino Museum is one of Rome's best collections of ancient Greek and Roman statues

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