Early Entry Vatican Breakfast – A Unique Rome Experience

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Vatican Breakfast

Looking for the the best way to see the Vatican? Here’s an experience that’s off the Roman rails. Have you heard of the Vatican early entry breakfast?

It used to be offered through the Vatican Museums site but that seems to have changed. In fact, it changes like crazy every year.

For 2025 it’s only available through a tour company. You’ll get skip-the-line tickets, early Vatican access and discover a unique thing to do in Rome.

Early Morning Vatican Tour – Our Experience

You do have to get up awfully early, but not as early as we did.

It was 5:30 a.m. when 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.

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.

Early Access to the Vatican

Yet I felt a little thrill because we were going to see the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel without the crowds.

Our Vatican Museum early entrance breakfast meant we’d be there before the museum was open to the public. (At the time we didn’t realize that once we’d had breakfast we still couldn’t enter the museums until 8:30 a.m.)

A One of a Kind Experience in Rome

It had taken a long time to convince Mark that early morning was the best way to see the Vatican.

“What if it’s one of those unmissable morning experiences like Angkor Wat at sunrise?” I’d asked. “You have to admit it’s a unique thing to do in Rome. It probably even trumps seeing the skeleton chandeliers in the Capuchin Crypt on Via Veneto.”

Vatican City Without the Crowds

The best part is seeing the Vatican without hordes of tourists.

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 a magnificent metro at rush hour.

“Full English breakfast,” I reminded Mark, as 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.

What Is Early Entrance Breakfast at the Vatican?

A Vatican Museum breakfast includes entry and a buffet breakfast served in either the Restaurant Area or the Pinecone Courtyard of the Vatican Museums. It depends on the season.

Tour Tip: It’s almost always in the Pinecone Courtyard now.

Once you eat your breakfast, away you go into the Vatican Museums and towards the Sistine Chapel and you’re alone (almost) in the Vatican. Can you imagine it?

Booking Early Entry Vatican Tours

Whether you want breakfast or not is up to you. You can do early morning access either way.

Vatican Museums Early Entry Tour with Breakfast

Rates for the breakfast package range from $117 USD to more than $300 depending on the day. 

Tour Tip: You’re likely to pay more than $200 for the experience.

This is basically the tour we did. Although, as I mentioned, we booked directly through the Vatican, which the Vatican no longer allows, so the schedule may be different.

It starts later than ours did, at 8:20 a.m. whereas ours started at 7:30, and the breakfast time is now 30 minutes.

Early Morning Access Vatican Skip-the-line Museum and Sistine Chapel Tour Without Breakfast

Of course, no one is forcing you to have breakfast (though it is rather good).

The regular Early Morning Skip-the-Line tours are even more popular with visitors. This 3.5 hour Early Access Tour includes a guide, and is limited to 12 people.

The tour takes in the all-important Big 3 (Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s) and meets at Via Santamaura, 14B, near the Vatican at 8:00 a.m.

Prices start at $146.

New! Ultra Elite Way to See the Vatican – 6:00 a.m. Key Master’s Tour

The Key Master Tour is so popular and so special I could only find a couple of spaces left for the summer.

Picture it: You head into the Vatican with the Clavigero, the guardian of the Vatican keys, as he unlocks the gallery doors.

All is still. The art is breathtaking. Nothing but the click of the Clavigero’s footsteps as he goes from door to door.

Then you’re in the Sistine Chapel: Empty, except for a very few. 

Wow. I thought the Vatican breakfast was fabulously personal, this would be beyond. 

This is an incredibly exclusive tour. Prices are from $825 a person, and there is very limited availability – though it’s worth checking for last minute cancellations. Try to book months in advance.

Getting to Vatican City Early 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 and plush velvet curtains, I’d also pictured us strolling hand-in-hand through a delicate rose sunrise to the Vatican entrance.

We would 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 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 Breakfast

The Restaurant Area

When we went we were led to the Restaurant Area. Yup, that’s what it’s called.

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.

The Pine Cone Courtyard Vatican Breakfast

You’re more likely to eat outside in the Pinecone Courtyard, the Cortile della Pigna, which has a much better ring to it than the Restaurant Area.

Plus it has a colossal bronze Pinecone cast in the 1st or 2nd century AD.

I wished we were eating there. With 1400 rooms in the Vatican they couldn’t have found something more ornate than the Breakfast Area, I wondered?

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 bleak surroundings in case he threw me an I-told-you-so look.

What Is the Vatican Breakfast 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. This is a unique shared experience. The Vatican is the heart of Christianity – a wellspring of spirituality, history and art.

No one seemed interested in talking so I ate another croissant.

It didn’t matter. 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.

Tour Guide With Audio Headset 

When we went we had the option of a tour or an audioguide, and we opted for an audioguide. For 2025 it seems the only option with the Vatican Breakfast is to have a guide.

The good thing about having an audioguide and going through independently was that we could wander through the Vatican any way we liked.

The bad thing? The audioguide was pretty dry. Like really dry.

I don’t want to insult the Vatican but they should really listen to the audioguide at the Villa Borghese when they talk about Bernini in Rome, or the audioguide at the Doria Pamphilj to get an idea of what’s entertaining.

At least the Vatican audioguide gives you an idea of what’s what. Or it would have for us if we hadn’t stopped listening to it altogether.

Starting Our Tour

It took only a minute to get our headsets at the breakfast, then we waited at the entryway like racehorses poised to charge down the track. Other 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.”

Mark turned away but I’m pretty sure he was rolling his eyes.

How Big is the Vatican?

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.

So Many Masterpieces

Dating back to 1503, the museums hold a jaw-dropping collection of Renaissance paintings, 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 we were allowed in I was ready to sprint. It worked. Mark and I were the first ones in.

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.

Things to See Before You Get to the Sistine Chapel

Much as I hated to admit it, Mark had a point. Why was I hurrying?

While the Sistine Chapel is the number one draw in a Vatican tour, it’s at the far end of the tour route, and you’ll be passing room after room of masterpieces.

Vatican Masterpieces

There are priceless works of art to see like:

• Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ
• Leonardo da Vinci’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness
• The Belvedere Torso 
• The ancient Greek masterpiece Laocoon and his Sons
• The Stefaneschi Triptych by Giotto
• And the Porphyry Basin that Nero used to bathe in.

We were passing them by in our flight.

“You’re right,” I said.

The Raphael Rooms

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.

He was the Warrior Pope who, in addition to being known to engage in warfare in the name of the church, 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 came alive, shades of the Renaissance seeping out of the stone archways and intricately-tiled floors.

Saint Peter’s Basilica

After you see the Sistine Chapel and leave the palace there is, of course, another top sight to see in the Vatican City, Saint Peter’s Basilica.

A standard route will lead you to the basilica after you leave the Sistine Chapel – it’s almost impossible to miss.

The largest basilica in the world, it’s believed to be the burial place of St. Peter, the first pope.

Tour Tip: On Wednesdays there is no access to St. Peter’s Basilica until the afternoon.

Conclusion: Don’t Rush

Once we’d decided to slow down, it was a different experience. We wandered through gallery after gallery.

At one point we got lost in a stairwell. 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.

Taking it slow and enjoying the whole experience, however, rather than beelining for one top sight is the best way to see the Vatican of all.

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