Rome blog for Bed & Breakfast Chaplin Hostel

The Vatican museums, which used to open their gates at 8.45am and close at 3.45pm (except on saturdays and on the last sunday of the month when the closing hour used to be 1.45pm), will as of January 2007 open at 10am. If you want to get in earlier and visit the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel at your own speed you will have to be part of a tour group and that tour group will have to have made a reservation at least 30 days in advance through tourist agencies that will have to be registered with the Italian chamber of commerce. So much for competition.

The privileged agencies will have to deposit €6,000 in order to be allowed to handle the bookings. The bookings will have to be made at least 30 days beforehand. (Foreign agencies will thus be excluded and so will Rome’s authorized guides. Presumably the owners of the Italian tour agencies will have uncorked some nice bottles of champagne upon hearing the news.)The closing hours do not change, so despite a price hike of €1 (from 12 to 13€, but considering the quantity and quality of the objects on display that can hardly be a cause for complaint), you will get one hour less time to visit the museums, meaning that during the winter months, even if you manage to be one of the first visitors to get in at 10am, you still won’t be able to spend more than slightly over 3 hours there, and that is a reason to lament. During the high season it will not be much better, though, since in the past 3 hour queues were no exceptions (the Vatican museums let in more than 10,000 visitors per day in 2006). Till last year, if you didn’t feel like queuing up, you could hazard arriving at the museums at around noon and more often than not there would be hardly any waiting time at all. In 2007, if you arrive at noon, you will still have to wait in line, but at the hottest moment of the day.

So if you decide to go with one of the privileged tour companies, apart from paying the extra euro, you will also have to fork out an additional €2 booking fee (so being part of a Vatican Museum tour group will really cost you €15 as of this year).Groups of up to 30 people who want a private visit (after closing time) will be charged €2,500 (plus €15 per person for a ticket) for a two hour visit, which in 2006 was €1,800 plus €12 per person. For very large groups (of more than 100 people) the price is raised from 7,000 to 20,000 euros. Plus the price of the individual tickets, that goes without saying.