Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums are less a single museum and more a sprawling constellation of galleries, chapels, and collections accumulated by the papacy over five centuries. The numbers are staggering — roughly 70,000 works, 20,000 on display, spread across 54 galleries covering 7 kilometres of exhibition space. You'll find everything from ancient Egyptian mummies to Raphael's Stanze to contemporary art, but the gravitational centre is obviously the Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo's ceiling (1508-1512) and Last Judgment (1536-1541).\n\nBeyond the Sistine Chapel, highlights include the Raphael Rooms (the School of Athens alone is worth the visit), the Gallery of Maps (a 120-metre corridor of 16th-century topographical frescoes that doubles as one of the most beautiful hallways on earth), the Laocoön and Belvedere Apollo in the Pio-Clementino Museum, and the Bramante Staircase. The collection of classical sculpture rivals any museum in the world, and the Pinacoteca holds major works by Giotto, Caravaggio, and Leonardo.\n\nPractical reality: it is very crowded, especially in the corridors leading to the Sistine Chapel. The extended hours (now open until 20:00) help spread visitors out. Book online well in advance. If you can, go on a weekday afternoon or during the last hour for a marginally less compressed experience.