The Vatican like many of the sites in Rome has all kinds of lines and wait times. I have a ridiculous fear of lines or anything that requires me to wait. This fear is more pronounced when I’m on vacation. For me relaxing on vacation means going from one event to the other and filling it up with activities as much as possible and lines don’t work in that formula for a good time. As such I spend a more than sane amount of time researching beforehand where to go and how to avoid wait times.
Most people hate waiting in line but judging by the amount of people waiting it didn’t seem like they hated it enough to do the research. Here’s some rules and strategies we used to avoid the lines while seeing the sites at the Vatican.
Rule #1: if you fail to plan you plan to fail – Lady Gaga, or PeeWee Herman. Not sure who
Rule #2: don’t believe anybody. There is always another way
Let’s illustrate these two rules with a story of how we got into St. Peter’s today
St Peter’s
Searching on line you can find there is a place you can write the Vatican and request to take the necropolis tour. We did this three months before we came here. They emailed me back the time we could go (9:20). Only people 15 and older may take the tour. Apparently only ~250 people per day are allowed to take the tour compared with the ~17,000 people that enter the Vatican each day so getting this tour is a good way to feel like part of the 1%.
We had 8 people in our party and 4 ineligible kids. So we booked 4 tickets and made things up as we got along.
When we first got to St. Peter’s square the line to get in was already pretty big. We ignored this line and followed the instructions from the Vatican to enter the right side of the basilica for the necropolis tour. We walked to the Swiss guards and they looked at our printed pass and let us all pass by even though the pass was for only 4 people and there were 8 of us.
Passing up the side we checked the four people in to the tour (Jackie, Trudie, and my mom and dad) and I asked the guard if there was a way for me to take the other three in some different way. “Not possible” said the guard, “You will have to go outside and wait in the line”. Yikes!
We said goodbye to the necropolis group and O, Anne, Maddie, and myself started heading to the exit feeling somewhat defeated and a bit apprehensive about waiting in line. But as we exited I noticed some stairs that lead up to the main entrance of St Peters. The Swiss guards had their backs to us and there were no ropes or fences or anyone to tell me I couldn’t go up to enter the basilica there. So we just kept walking on and not two minutes after saying goodbye to the necropolis group we were inside staring at Michelangelo’s pieta.
Which brings me to
Rule 3: always look like you know where you are going.
Rule 4: plan ahead (repeat of rule #1)
The Vatican Museums were fabulous as well. Here I used credit card points to book at tour and we got in the skip the line path. We met our guide Francesca and got right in.
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