Indeed! These visits are special night visits for online bookings and groups. The good thing is that the museums are less crowded than usually (although it’s impossible not to be a little jammed in Raffaello’s rooms if two or more groups gather together), the bad thing is that they are open just until 23 pm, we’ve been literally speaking thrown out of the Sixtine Chapel!
But so many years passed since my last visit and I had to go back to the Museums; when I was an Erasmus student in Rome each visit I made lasted between five and six hours! 🙂
How lovely to have such opportunities! I am envious. I’ve been to the Vatican Museums twice, but both times it was very crowded, and some rooms were closed. And as for the Sistine Chapel, it was horrible, filled with tourists clicking photos (with flash, in spite of the signs) and being shushed by the attendants. I think they should prohibit photos in there.
i work quite near the Vatican, and one morning at the end of January when my husband was driving me to the office we saw that there was no line to enter! We were about to park and enter! (but we had to go to work 😦 )
I visited the Museums for the first time in 1986, before the Sixtine Chapel was cleaned up. Nowadays trying to avoid the use of cameras in a place crowded as the Sixtine Chapel is impossible (given that also phones work as cameras); the chapel is now less noisy, as guides are forbidden to make explanations inside it (there are now illustrative pannels in the Pigna Court) and now all the groups use wireless headphones, but it’s always too much for my tastes. Sometimes I feel very snobbish and miss the times before low cost flights and globalization in which I could spend half an hour in front of the Laocoonte without any group of tourists disturbing me. But, on the other hand, the money that the new wave of tourists have brought has allowed the very expensive cleaning up works (it’s incredible the COLOURS in Raffaello’s rooms!!!!).
miraculously uncrowded!
Indeed! These visits are special night visits for online bookings and groups. The good thing is that the museums are less crowded than usually (although it’s impossible not to be a little jammed in Raffaello’s rooms if two or more groups gather together), the bad thing is that they are open just until 23 pm, we’ve been literally speaking thrown out of the Sixtine Chapel!
But so many years passed since my last visit and I had to go back to the Museums; when I was an Erasmus student in Rome each visit I made lasted between five and six hours! 🙂
How lovely to have such opportunities! I am envious. I’ve been to the Vatican Museums twice, but both times it was very crowded, and some rooms were closed. And as for the Sistine Chapel, it was horrible, filled with tourists clicking photos (with flash, in spite of the signs) and being shushed by the attendants. I think they should prohibit photos in there.
i work quite near the Vatican, and one morning at the end of January when my husband was driving me to the office we saw that there was no line to enter! We were about to park and enter! (but we had to go to work 😦 )
I visited the Museums for the first time in 1986, before the Sixtine Chapel was cleaned up. Nowadays trying to avoid the use of cameras in a place crowded as the Sixtine Chapel is impossible (given that also phones work as cameras); the chapel is now less noisy, as guides are forbidden to make explanations inside it (there are now illustrative pannels in the Pigna Court) and now all the groups use wireless headphones, but it’s always too much for my tastes. Sometimes I feel very snobbish and miss the times before low cost flights and globalization in which I could spend half an hour in front of the Laocoonte without any group of tourists disturbing me. But, on the other hand, the money that the new wave of tourists have brought has allowed the very expensive cleaning up works (it’s incredible the COLOURS in Raffaello’s rooms!!!!).