The Director of the Vatican Museums, Mr. Antonio Paolucci, who welcomes the visitors to the present web site, hopes that this informative means may be a useful instrument of knowledge and access to the complex reality of these five hundred – year old art collections which are the destination of more than four million visitors each year.

It is one of the most renowned and famous cultural institutions of the Holy See, known all over the world for its masterpieces that have been commissioned, collected and preserved in time by the Roman Pontiffs. Besides the great heritage of movable works of art, sculptures and paintings, exhibited in the galleries, the visit inside the Vatican Museums also includes very significant and artistically relevant places of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, such as the Niccolina Chapel containing the paintings of Beato Angelico, the Borgia Apartment decorated by Pinturicchio, the Rooms painted by Raphael and, naturally, the Sistine Chapel with the frescoes of the great masters of the fifteenth-century that come from Umbria and Tuscany and of Michelangelo.

The Holy Father has entrusted us with the great responsibility to care for, preserve, study, and enhance this invaluable heritage of culture and art, by making it known and putting it at the disposal of a very diversified public from all over the world. More than three hundred people – among functionaries, employees, restorers, and attendants – dedicate themselves every day, with great professionalism and availability to accomplish this difficult task. (from the Web site)

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