The Sistine Chapel: Michelangelo's Ceiling and How to See It

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is high above your head. Michelangelo painted hundreds of square metres of it, filling the ceiling with hundreds of figures. You reach the room towards the end of the standard museum route, after passing through kilometres of galleries containing far more than you could realistically see in a single visit. You cannot take photographs or film in it with any type of electronic equipment, and you are asked to keep absolute silence.

We at Travelmyth, the hotel search engine that ranks stays by your interests and needs across 60 stay categories, put this guide together to cover the Sistine Chapel properly. Below you will find who painted what and when, what to look for on the ceiling and on the walls, why the room matters to the Church as much as to art history, and what you are not allowed to do inside. The hours, the tickets and the transport are at the end.

The Sistine Chapel is inside the Vatican Museums, at Viale Vaticano in Rome. The chapel is one part of the much larger Vatican Museums site, and it sits towards the end of the standard museum route, so the ticket that admits you to the Museums is the ticket that admits you to the chapel.

That has a practical consequence. Your entry ticket covers the Museums and the Sistine Chapel only for the date booked or purchased, and tickets cannot be refunded. Plan at least half a day for the Museums and the chapel together.

Some authorised guided itineraries may use the internal passage from the Sistine Chapel towards St Peter's Basilica, avoiding the longer walk around the Vatican walls. Access is not available to ordinary independent visitors and can depend on operational arrangements.

The short answer people usually want is Michelangelo, and it is half right. Michelangelo painted the ceiling and the Last Judgement, in the 16th century. He did not paint the 15th-century fresco cycle on the side walls, and he did not design the room: the present chapel was built for Pope Sixtus IV in the late 15th century.

The chapel came first. It takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, pontiff from 1471 to 1484, who commissioned the rebuilding of the old Cappella Magna in the late 15th century. The work is associated with Giovanni de' Dolci and Baccio Pontelli, and the new chapel was consecrated on 15 August 1483. Sixtus IV dedicated it to Our Lady of the Assumption, and the first Mass was celebrated on the same day.

Michelangelo received the ceiling commission twenty-five years after the chapel was consecrated. Julius II della Rovere, pontiff from 1503 to 1513 and nephew of Sixtus IV, decided to partly alter the decoration and entrusted the work to Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1508. The work was finished in October 1512, and on the Feast of All Saints, 1 November 1512, Julius II inaugurated the chapel with a solemn Mass. If you have read a date in the 1480s attached to Michelangelo and the ceiling, it is wrong: Julius II was not pope then, and the Vatican dates the commission to 1508.

Before Michelangelo, the ceiling was not blank. Pier Matteo d'Amelia had painted a starry sky up there. That is what Julius II decided to paint over.

Look at the nine central panels first. They show the Stories of Genesis, running from the Creation to the Fall of man, to the Flood and the rebirth of mankind with the family of Noah. The Creation of Adam is up there, and it is the image you will recognise before you locate it.

Then bring your eyes down to the sides. In the spaces between the spandrels, seated on monumental thrones, are five Sibyls and seven Prophets. Michelangelo also painted the lunettes, the curved panels on the upper part of the walls.

The scale is difficult to grasp from the floor. The chapel itself is about 40 metres long and 13 metres wide, while Michelangelo's frescoed ceiling covers roughly 750 square metres.

The side walls date from the late 15th century. They were painted by a team initially made up of Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli. Work on those frescoes began in 1481 and was concluded in 1482.

The room they were painting is architecturally plain. It is a simple brick building with six arched windows on each of the two side walls and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Its otherwise relatively simple architecture provides the setting for an extraordinarily dense programme of fresco decoration.

Spend some of your time at eye level. Botticelli and Perugino are on those walls.

The Sistine Chapel is more than a room on the museum itinerary: it remains a functioning papal chapel and the setting for the conclave that elects a new pope. Visitors are kindly requested to observe absolute silence, and the Vatican Museums cite the sanctity of the location when asking for it.

The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel underwent a major restoration programme between 1979 and 1999. Restoration of Michelangelo's ceiling ran from 7 November 1984 to 31 December 1989, followed by work on the Last Judgement from 1990 to March 1994. The restoration of the remaining 15th-century decoration continued until 1999.

Three of the Vatican's own rules are worth knowing before you go.

No photographs, at all. Photography for personal use is permitted in all areas of the Vatican Museums apart from the Sistine Chapel. In the chapel it is forbidden to take photographs or films with any type of electronic equipment. Flash photography is forbidden anywhere in the Museums, telescopic selfie sticks are forbidden, and tripods, stands and drones are not allowed without authorisation from the Directorate.

Silence. Visitors are asked to observe absolute silence in the chapel, in view of the sanctity of the location.

Dress code. Entry to the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Gardens is permitted only to appropriately dressed visitors. Sleeveless or low-cut garments, shorts above the knee, miniskirts and hats are not permitted.

The Sistine Chapel is at Viale Vaticano, 00165 Rome, which is the Vatican Museums address. Take Metro Line A in the direction of Battistini and get off at Ottaviano or Cipro. Bus 49 stops in the square in front of the Museums. Buses 32, 81 and 982 and tram 19 stop at Piazza del Risorgimento.

The chapel sits inside the Vatican Museums, within walking distance of St Peter's Square and St Peter's Basilica. The public entrances are on different sides of the Vatican walls, so allow time to walk between them.

Opening hours. The Sistine Chapel is located inside the Vatican Museums, which open Monday to Saturday from 08.00 to 20.00, with final entry at 18.00. They are closed on Sundays, except the last Sunday of each month. Visitors are required to leave the halls 30 minutes before museum closing time.

The free Sunday. Entry is free on the last Sunday of the month, 09.00 to 14.00, with final entry at 12.30. Not the first. The free opening does not apply when the last Sunday coincides with Easter Sunday, 29 June for Saints Peter and Paul, 25 December, 26 December or 31 December.

Tickets, and the scam warning. The full entry ticket is €20.00 without online booking. The full "Skip the Line" ticket is €20.00 plus a €5.00 booking fee on the official Vatican Museums website. The reduced ticket for eligible visitors is €10.00, or €10.00 plus €5.00 with Skip the Line booking. The Vatican warns that unofficial ticket websites may use addresses that closely resemble its own and may charge significantly higher prices. Make sure you are booking through the Vatican Museums' official ticketing service before completing your purchase. Opening hours and ticket prices can change, so check the latest details before your visit.

Where to stay. The Vatican Museums admit visitors from 08.00 Monday to Saturday, and the chapel is inside them. You can compare stays in Rome across 60 categories on Travelmyth by what you actually care about, from boutique-style properties to family-friendly stays, and combine any two of them.