Vatican Museums

Thematic itinerary “Masterpieces from Antiquity to Renaissance”

The Vatican Museums are one of the most important museum complexes in the world for the extraordinary collections contained and therefore it is necessary to select what you like to see.

The tour theme "Masterpieces from antiquity to the Renaissance" shows how the Classical Greek-Roman art rediscovered starting from the humanistic period is  a model for artists as Raffaello and Michelangelo.

The itinerary will include a visit to the Courtyard of the Pigna, designed by Donato Bramante, the Museum Chiaramonti excellent example of nineteenth-century collectors who meet without an apparent order sculptures, sarcophagies, busts and fragments of decoration with the aim of preserving the past.

Heart of the tour is the Octagonal Courtyard which houses sculptures from different periods that allow to evaluate the stylistic evolution of classical Greek art, represented by a Roman copy of the Apollo Belvedere, and the Hellenistic art of which is a Roman copy of the Laocoon an admirable example, the neo-classical works of Antonio Canova (Perseus, and Creugas Damoxenos) complete the comparison.

We’ll visit the Hall of animals, which contains sculptures and sculptural groups of the Roman era of great realism and details rendering thanks to the use of coloured marbles, the Hall of the Muses with the famous Belvedere Torso, original Greek work of Apollonius, 1st century B.C., the Room of the Rotunda and the Hall of the Greek Cross, which houses the sarcophagus of the Empress Helena and Constance.

The tour continues with the Candelabra Gallery, the Gallery of Tapestries and finally that of the Maps so to reach the Stanze of Raphael, the painter who drew up for Pope Julius II Della Rovere and arrive at last to Sistine Chapel, masterpiece of Michelangelo who carried out the ceiling painting scenes from Genesis and the Last Judgement, now  back to the original colours after 10 years of restoration work.