TravelMe, Alina Kovalevich

Updated for 2026: The Vatican is as busy as ever, so reserve museum entry ahead, arrive early, and expect security checks and dress-code enforcement at St. Peter's.

TravelMe, Alina Kovalevich

"Laocoon and His Sons" is one of the signature works of the Vatican's Pio-Clementino Museum: a dramatic sculptural group showing the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons locked in a fatal struggle with serpents. The piece is traditionally associated with the Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydorus, and is usually understood as a Roman marble version of an earlier Hellenistic original. When it was unearthed in Rome on January 14, 1506, Pope Julius II immediately sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo to inspect it. From that moment on, it became one of the Vatican's defining masterpieces.

Apollo Belvedere is a Roman marble copy of a lost Greek bronze, usually linked to the sculptor Leochares. Apollo appears in the instant after releasing an arrow: poised, effortless, and coolly confident. The statue was found near Anzio in the late 15th century and moved to the Vatican under Pope Julius II, where it was displayed in the Belvedere Courtyard. That setting is what gave the work the name it still carries today.

Flickr, maxunterwegs

The Raphael Rooms (Stanze di Raffaello) are a suite of papal apartments in the Vatican Palace. Pope Julius II chose them for his residence and, on Bramante's advice, entrusted their decoration to the young Raphael, who was only twenty-five. Raphael and his workshop worked here from 1508 onward, covering room after room with fresco cycles on theology, philosophy, history, and papal authority. The Hall of Constantine was completed after Raphael's death by his pupils, working from the master's designs.

Flickr, Air Force One

The Sistine Chapel is the Vatican's best-known chapel and one of the essential stops on this route. Built between 1473 and 1481 for Pope Sixtus IV, it later became the setting for papal conclaves and remains one today. Most visitors come for Michelangelo's frescoes, but the room itself also tells a political story: the papacy wanted a space that was ceremonial, symbolic, and secure.

Flickr, ¬ Luiz Matta ®

Michelangelo's Pieta is the most famous sculptural image of the grieving Virgin Mary holding Christ and one of the great treasures of St. Peter's. He carved it while still in his twenties, and it remains the only work he ever signed. Originally made for the tomb of the French cardinal Jean de Bilheres, the sculpture was later moved to the basilica. Since the 1972 attack that damaged the statue, it has been displayed behind protective glass near the entrance.

Flickr, julacr

You only understand the scale of St. Peter's when you step onto the central axis and look ahead. The basilica is colossal, yet the interior feels surprisingly balanced. Bernini's baroque richness - colored marble, gilding, niches, statues, tombs, and shimmering mosaics - never feels chaotic; instead, it reads as grand, deliberate, and unmistakably Roman.

The plan is shaped like a cross. In church architecture, each arm is called a nave, and the great dome rises where the main axes meet.

The dome rests on four enormous piers, part of Bramante's original conception. Each contains a niche used as a reliquary, so it is worth taking a closer look: some of the basilica's most important sacred objects are kept here.