The Vatican Museums breakfast tour starts before most visitors arrive, with a buffet breakfast served in the Cortile della Pigna, a courtyard lined with modern art inside the Vatican Museums complex. It is a quiet, unusual way to begin a morning that later turns into one of the busiest museum visits in the world.

After breakfast, your small group gets early access to the galleries, including the Hall of Maps and the Gallery of Tapestries, while the crowds are still thin. Your guide points out details in the frescoed ceilings and Flemish textiles that are easy to miss once the rooms fill up later in the day.

The tour continues into the Sistine Chapel to see Michelangelo's ceiling, then carries you with skip-the-line entry into St. Peter's Basilica, where you can view Michelangelo's Pieta without rejoining a separate queue. If you would rather skip the breakfast and keep costs down, our standard three-site Vatican tour covers the same three sites for less.

For background on the museum's history, see the Vatican Museums' collection, built up by popes over five centuries. Our Vatican Museums tickets guide compares this early-access option against the rest of our tours.