Vatican Museums offer new dawn tours

By Philippa Hitchen

“Good Morning Vatican Museums” is the name of a new initiative offering visitors an exclusive dawn tour of one of the world’s most famous art collections.

Each year, some six million people visit the Vatican Museums, which are currently managed by their first female director, Barbara Jatta.

This new initiative offers the public the opportunity to enter the museums at 6am and witness the solemn ceremony of opening up the various exhibition rooms.

Visitors enter the building in the dark, watching as staff unlock the doors and switch on the lights to illuminate artistic treasures such as the Raphael rooms, the Maps gallery and the Sistine Chapel.

The exclusive guided tour includes breakfast in the Cortile della Pigna, a courtyard containing a modern globe sculpture and a 1st-century giant bronze pine cone that was discovered near the Baths of the Roman consul Agrippa.