Breakfast at the Vatican

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Looking for the the best way to see the Vatican? Here’s an experience that’s off the rails. Have you heard of the Vatican Breakfast? Offered through the Vatican Museums itself, you’ll get skip-the-line tickets, early access and discover a unique thing to do in Rome.

An early morning Vatican tour

My husband, Mark, turned over in his sleep and yanked the sheet tucked under my neck so hard I woke up wondering why someone was trying to strangle me.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“5:30 a.m.” My eyes opened to slits. “We could have slept until 6:15.”

“You’re the one who wants to go.”

It wasn’t our best moment. It was our last day in Rome, we were sightsee-ed out and we were going to the Vatican for breakfast.

Mark stared at the chandelier over our hotel bed as if trying to remember why he’d married a travel writer who wants to drag him through every museum in Rome.

And I felt a little thrill because we were going to see the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel without the crowds. We’d be there before even the early access tours, and nearly two hours before the museum was open to the public. Surely it’s the best way to visit the Vatican, I thought, yet few people seem to know about it.

A unique thing to do in Rome

It had taken a week to convince Mark it was the best way to see the Vatican, and we’d only booked the night before. “What if it’s one of those unmissable morning experiences like seeing Angkor Wat at sunrise?” I’d asked. “You have to admit it’s unique. It probably even trumps the skeleton chandeliers and bone decor in the Capuchin Crypt.”

The best part would be seeing the Vatican without the crowds. The last time I’d gone to the Vatican City Museums I’d waited in line for two hours, then shuffled down the long corridors in the midst of a thrum of people. It wasn’t a heavenly experience. It was more like being in the metro at rush hour.

“Full English breakfast,” I reminded Mark, because food is usually the most direct route to his heart.

Evidently his heart wasn’t awake yet because he groaned and went into the shower.

“We’ll be the first ones in,” I shouted through the door.

And who knew? Maybe the pope or a few cardinals would show up and we could all visit the Sistine Chapel together.

What is early entrance breakfast at the Vatican?

The Vatican breakfast is a buffet breakfast served in either the Restaurant Area or the Pinecone Courtyard of the Vatican Museums, depending on the season. It starts at 7:15 a.m., though you should be there by 7. Once you’ve eaten your substantial hot breakfast with up to 30 other people, away you go into the Vatican Museums and towards the Sistine Chapel an hour before it’s open to the public.

Alone in the Vatican. Can you even imagine it?

Getting to Vatican City from central Rome

Vatican City is on the west side of the Tiber River, across from the historical centre of Rome. When I’d envisioned our lavish Vatican breakfast surrounded by 14th-century altarpieces, marble columns and plush velvet curtains I’d also pictured us strolling hand-in-hand through a delicate rose sunrise to the Vatican entrance. We’d cross the Ponte Sant’Angelo, the Bridge of Angels, much as the medieval pilgrims used to do.

Instead we were tired and cranky so we just got a cab.

At that time of morning taking a taxi to St Peter’s Square is fast, but you can also take the metro to Cipro – Musei Vaticani, about a 10-minute walk to the Vatican entrance.

The Vatican breakfast experience

Outside we waited in a misty rain with about 20 other people. Promptly at 7:15 we were let in. As there is no one else at the Vatican at this time, security was a breeze, even for the sleepiest of tourists.

We were led to the Restaurant Area. Seriously, that’s what it’s called. If you visit between April and November you eat in the Pinecone Courtyard, which has a colossal bronze Pine Cone cast in the 1st or 2nd century AD, and has a much better ring to it. The Restaurant Area had two long tables and a side wall buffet, not a masterpiece in sight. I couldn’t help thinking the decor wasn’t much more elaborate than its name.

With 1400 rooms in the Vatican they couldn’t have found something more ornate? While I didn’t expect to be eating scrambled eggs by candlelight under Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, what about the Gallery of Tapestries or the Hall of Animals? A little alcove with a Caravaggio?

“Bacon!” I said, trying to divert Mark’s attention away from the plain surroundings in case he threw me an I-told-you-so look.

What is the buffet like?

Admittedly, the buffet was good. Bacon, sausages, fresh fruit, pancakes, toast, pastries, coffee, cappuccino, tea. The caffeine hit woke me up and I tried to strike up a conversation with the people around us. After all, this was a unique shared experience. The Vatican is the heart of Christianity – a wellspring of spirituality, history and art.

No one seemed interested so I ate another croissant.

It didn’t matter anyway. As soon as I saw the headsets being handed out my sense of shared community evaporated in my desire to be first to the Sistine Chapel.

Gallery of Maps

How to do an Early Entrance Vatican Museum and Breakfast

There are a couple of ways of doing breakfast at the Vatican and they need to be booked beforehand.

• Entry, breakfast and tour with a guide
• Entry, breakfast and audioguide tour

We would have booked the Vatican breakfast tour with a guide, but it was full so we’d opted for headsets. It took only a minute to get them, then we waited at the entryway like racehorses poised to charge down the track. Early access tours were trickling in, and I didn’t want them getting ahead of us.

“The thing to do is get to the Sistine Chapel as fast as you can,” I told Mark under my breath. “I read it on the Internet. Don’t get sidetracked or we’ll be sharing the Sistine Chapel with a million other tourists.”

How big is the Vatican?

Mark turned away but I’m pretty sure he was rolling his eyes. The distance from the Vatican Museums entrance to the Sistine Chapel is about 500 metres if you go direct, but there are some 7.5 km (4.5 miles) of galleries and corridors in total. Dating back to 1503, the museums hold a jaw-dropping collection of Renaissance paintings, ancient antiquities, priceless tapestries and religious and secular art. There’s even a marble chariot. The chances of getting sidetracked are high.

But I was on a mission and as soon as 8 a.m. struck I was ready to sprint.

It worked. Mark and I were the first ones into the Vatican Museums.

It was a split second moment of triumph because we were quickly overtaken by a tour leader holding a flag.

“Hurry!” I said to Mark over my shoulder as I hurtled down the Gallery of Maps, a long hallway that connects the Papal Palace to the Sistine Chapel. Sixteenth-century frescoes showing the regions of Italy whizzed by my sight and I was barely aware of the elaborate ceiling paintings overhead.

“Why?” he said.

I stopped, nearly causing a pileup of Sistine Chapel-bound tourists behind me.

The best way to see the Vatican

Much as I hated to admit it, Mark had a point. Why was I hurrying? We were passing room after room of masterpieces. What about Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ, Leonardo da Vinci’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness, the Belvedere Torso and the ancient Greek masterpiece Laocoon and his Sons? What about the Stefaneschi Triptych by Giotto and the Porphyry Basin Nero used to bathe in?

“You’re right,” I said.

We veered off the papal highway and that’s how we ended up in the Raphael Rooms completely alone. Painted in the early 1500s, this suite of four rooms are dripping in frescoes by Raphael and his workshop. The rooms were originally part of the apartments of Pope Julius II, the Warrior Pope who, in addition to being known to engage in warfare in the name of the church, had kickstarted the Vatican Museums by donating his collection.

It’s a miracle, I thought, looking around The Room of the Fire of the Borgo. It’s just us and the frescoes. For the first time since we’d been in the Vatican, history seemed to come alive, shades of the Renaissance seeping out of the stone archways, marble doorways and intricately-tiled floors.

Raphael Rooms

Slowing down

After that we wandered through gallery after gallery, at one point getting lost in a stairwell with no direction at all. I wasn’t even upset (hardly) that we missed the Caravaggio in the Pinacoteca, because there was so much else to see.

Breakfast at the Vatican is a unique way to experience Rome, and seeing the Sistine Chapel with only a few other tour groups is a marvellous feat, but taking it slow and enjoying the whole experience rather than beelining for one top sight is the best way to see the Vatican of all.

PS: And the Sistine Chapel still wasn’t crowded when we got there.