What are the “must-sees” inside the Vatican Museums?
A. With hundreds of rooms of priceless art it’s not easy to make a short list, but there are a dozen or so things you absolutely shouldn’t miss. Here’s the list: the best paintings of the picture gallery (Raphael’s “Transfiguration”, Leonardo da Vinci’s “St. Jerome” and Caravaggio’s “Deposition” and “Denial of Peter”); the Raphael tapestries (also in the picture gallery); the Courtyard of the Pine (one of the best photo opportunities in Rome); the Apollo and Laocoon sculptures in the Octagonal Courtyard; the Belvedere Torso; the Gallery of the Maps; the Raphael Stanze (the private apartments the artist frescoed for Pope Julius II); and of course the magnificently restored frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.
