St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter's Basilica tickets: which one to buy

Entry to the basilica itself is free, which surprises many visitors, so what you pay for is either speed or access to something extra. The free route means the security queue across St Peter's Square, which can run from twenty minutes to well over an hour depending on the season and the hour. Priority-access tickets sold by operators do not skip security, but they add a guide and a reserved slot that moves you through faster. The dome is the one genuine ticket: you choose between the full climb on foot and the lift that carries you to the roof terrace, after which everyone walks the last 320 steps up the narrowing shell of the cupola.

The Vatican Grottoes below the floor, where most of the popes are buried, are free and reached from inside. The Scavi, the excavated Roman necropolis around the tomb of Peter, is a separate small-group visit that must be booked with the Excavations Office weeks ahead and is not sold by tour operators. Combined tours with the Vatican Museums are common and efficient, because guided groups may use the internal passage from the Sistine Chapel and so avoid the square queue altogether.

Visiting St Peter's Basilica: what to see

The scale is the first thing you notice and the hardest to photograph. Bronze markers down the nave show where other great cathedrals would end if laid inside this one. On the right, just past the entrance, Michelangelo's Pieta sits behind glass, carved when he was twenty-four and the only work he signed. Ahead, Bernini's baldachin rises on twisted bronze columns over the papal altar, and behind it the Cathedra Petri glows in a burst of gilded stucco and yellow glass.

The dome overhead is Michelangelo's design, completed after his death, with the words of Christ to Peter running around its base in letters two metres high. Down in the grottoes lie the tombs of popes from the medieval period to John Paul II. Above, the climb rewards you twice: first the roof terrace at the base of the dome, then the gallery inside the drum that looks straight down onto the marble floor, and finally the lantern with its view across the square, the colonnade and the roofs of Rome.

St Peter's Basilica opening hours and the best time to go

The basilica opens early, around seven, and the first hour is the best of the day, with light coming through the eastern windows and only a handful of people in the nave. By ten the square is full and the security line is long. Late afternoon calms down again before closing, which is around seven in summer and six in winter. Wednesday mornings are the exception: the papal audience fills the square and the basilica opens late, so plan a different day if you can.

Dress code is enforced at the security checkpoint rather than at the door, so a cover-up in a bag is no help unless you put it on first. Shoulders and knees must be covered for everyone. The dome closes earlier than the basilica and stops selling tickets before that, so do the climb first if you want both. It is 551 steps from the ground, or 320 from the lift, in a stairway that leans with the curve of the dome near the top and is not for anyone uneasy in tight spaces.