The Sistine ceiling, the Mona Lisa, the Night Watch. All of it timed, ticketed and queued.
Which Vatican tour really skips the line. What the Uffizi costs for the first slot of the morning. Whether a guide earns its money at the Prado, or the headset does the job for a tenth of it. Reviews of the gallery tickets and tours you can book today.
The Vatican, the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Rijksmuseum: these four go in the calendar first.
What each one costs, how its entry actually works, and what the people who queued for it say afterwards.
01The Paris oneLouvre Museum Timed-Entrance TicketA timed slot under the pyramid and nothing else attached. The cheapest way into the Louvre, and the right ticket if you already know which wing you want.
02The Rome oneVatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica TourVatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s in one guided run. The version that gets you into the basilica without joining a second queue outside.
03The Florence oneSkip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketTimed entry to the Uffizi past the line that wraps the Piazzale. Take the earliest slot; by eleven the Botticelli room is shoulder to shoulder.
04The Amsterdam oneRijksmuseum Entry TicketStraight into the Rijksmuseum and the hall that holds the Night Watch. Entry only, which is the right call in a building that explains itself.
The Vatican, the Louvre and the Uffizi take more art museum bookings than anywhere else on earth.
Every collection on the site →These are the rooms people cross a continent for. Each one has its own entry rules, its own closing day and its own answer to whether a guide is worth paying for.
Rome, Florence, Paris, Madrid: the cities where the art is the reason you flew.
Six cities holding more gallery hours than there is daylight to spend on them. The way into each, and what it costs at the door.
Italy holds more bookable art than any other country on this site.
Rome for the Vatican and Bernini, Florence for the Uffizi and the David, the Vatican’s own square kilometre for the ceiling everyone comes to see. Three different entry problems and three different answers.
The art museum tickets more travellers book than any others.
Every gallery review on the site →The busiest doors in the art world, in order. The Vatican is number one and it is not close.
1
Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica Tour
Follow a licensed guide through the Vatican Museums, from the Pine Courtyard and ancient sculpture rooms to the Gallery of Maps and Sistine Chapel. You’ll hear stories behind Michelangelo and Raphael, then visit St. Peter’s Basilica and Michelangelo’s Pietà when that option is available.
From · $72
Read our review →
2
Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance Ticket
from $26
3
Van Gogh Museum Ticket
from $32
4
Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basilica Guided Tour
from $22
5
Rijksmuseum Entry Ticket
from $31
6
Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticket
from $30
7
Orsay Museum Entry Ticket
from $15
8
Prado Museum Entry Ticket
from $21
Paris keeps two of the finest collections in the world a mile apart.
The Louvre is too big to finish and everybody tries anyway. The Orsay is one former railway station of Impressionists and can be done properly in an afternoon. Both run on timed entry, and only one of them enforces it gently.
What getting into the great galleries actually costs.
Every ticket and tour here, grouped by price. The cheapest way into a world collection comes in under the price of lunch beside it.
Plain timed entry to the Louvre, the Prado, the Van Gogh and most of the rest. You walk in, you look, you leave when you have had enough.
Guided runs through the Vatican and the Uffizi, skip-the-line combinations, and the tours that put a real art historian in the room with you.
- 1Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica Tourfrom $72
- 2Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 3Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
Groups of six, private guides, after-hours access, and the Borghese slots that are capped by law rather than by demand.
Three works that a photograph simply cannot carry.
Reproductions get the colours and lose everything else: the scale, the surface, and the fact that somebody stood in that spot and made it by hand.
The Sistine ceiling
Michelangelo spent four years on scaffolding under this ceiling and complained about it in verse. What no print carries is the scale: the figures are painted large enough to read from sixty feet below, so on the page they look crowded and in the room they look inevitable. The Last Judgement on the altar wall came twenty-five years later from a much angrier man. Photographs are forbidden and the guards enforce it, which turns out to be the reason the room still works.
- 1Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 73,970 reviews
- 2Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basilica Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 39,149 reviews
- 3Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and Basilica Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 16,039 reviews
The Night Watch
Rembrandt was handed a civic militia to paint and gave them a stage entrance instead of a group portrait, which is why several of the men at the back paid full price to be in shadow. It runs twelve feet across, and it used to run wider: strips were cut off in 1715 to fit it through a doorway. The conservation work happens in public behind glass, so you can watch someone lift four centuries of varnish while you stand there.
- 1Rijksmuseum Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 29,512 reviews
- 2City Canal Cruise and Rijksmuseum★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,226 reviews
- 3Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Small-Group Tour with Private Upgrade★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,547 reviews
Bernini in the Borghese
Four marble groups in two rooms, all carved before Bernini turned twenty-six. Apollo and Daphne has bark closing over a girl’s fingers and laurel leaves thin enough to light through from behind. Entry runs in two-hour slots with a hard exit and a hard cap, and the villa sells out weeks ahead, which is precisely why the rooms stay quiet enough to walk round a statue twice.
- 1Borghese Gallery Skip-the-Line Ticket & Audioguide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 4,318 reviews
- 2Borghese Gallery Ticket + Audioguide or Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,219 reviews
- 3Borghese Gallery and Gardens Guided Small-Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,783 reviews
Four gallery tickets that will not be waiting for you on the day.
Most of a trip can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed slots, capped rooms and closing days that take no interest at all in when your flight lands.
- 01Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica TourThe Vatican Museums close on Sundays apart from the last one of the month, and that free Sunday is the single busiest day of their year.
- 02Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketClosed on Mondays and sold to the quarter hour. The first slots go first, because they are the only ones where the Botticelli room is bearable.
- 03Borghese Gallery Skip-the-Line Ticket & AudioguideEntry is capped by law and sold in two-hour blocks with a hard exit time. The villa is routinely gone a fortnight ahead.
- 04Van Gogh Museum TicketSold online in fifteen-minute windows and not sold at the door at all. Turning up without one means standing outside looking at the sign.
How you walk into a gallery decides what you take out of it.
A plain timed ticket is the cheapest way through the door and leaves you to it. A guide earns the fee in rooms where the labels tell you nothing, which is most of the Vatican. An audio guide splits the difference for the price of a coffee. A group of six buys the thing you actually want in front of a famous painting, which is somewhere to stand.
The modern collections are the ones you can still walk into on the day.
Picasso in Málaga and Barcelona, Dalí in Figueres, a Guggenheim under titanium in Bilbao and a room of projected flowers in Tokyo. Newer collections, shorter queues, and tickets that are usually still on sale at nine in the morning.
Every modern collection →
By collection, and by the way you go in
Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Florence, Rome: the run almost everybody does first.
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