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Friday, September 18, 2026

The Necropolis

Scavi Tour of the Vatican Necropolis

Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.  Nestled inside the city of Rome, this country is .17 square miles but has its own police force and government.  It is the spiritual headquarters of the Catholic Church.  Inside Vatican City you can visit the Vatican Museums, including seeing the famous Sistine Chapel, and you can visit St. Peter's Basilica.  I very highly recommend doing a tour of the Necropolis under St. Peter's Basilica.  This tour takes you under St. Peter's Basilica and includes seeing what is believed to be a box containing St. Peter's bones.  The tour ends up in St. Peter's Basilica, so it means skipping the very long line to get inside the Basilica.  I have taken the Scavi Tour three times so far, and would happily take it again.  I love the mystery of it, the history of it, and the convenience of the entrance to St. Peter's Basilica at the end.  

Do not purchase tickets to the Necropolis through a tour company.  You will pay a high price for the tour guide to talk to you for a few minutes and to walk you to the entrance to the real tour.  You can pay the low price from the official website of the Scavi Tour and receive the exact same score without the inflated price.  You can buy tickets for the Necropolis tour here:


The tickets for this tour are only 13 euro from this site.  Again, do not buy tickets from a tour company such as Viator -- we've done that before, it is NOT worth the money, and you end up paying a lot more money to take the tour with the official Scavi tour guides that you would have had when buying from the official site.  You have to buy the official Scavi tour tickets in advance because only 250 visitors are allowed per day and each group only contains about 12 people.  This is worth planning ahead!  It is my favorite experience when visiting the Vatican!  I have done the Necropolis tour three times so far, and will do again when I return to Rome.

The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel are also very worth seeing.  You will need your passport along with your ticket to be allowed into the Vatican Museum.  Have your passport out and ready when you reach the front of the line.  You cannot take photos or video inside the Sistine Chapel.  The museums take quite a long time to tour and you probably won't be able to see everything.  It is just too big!  Admission tickets cost 20 euros for the museums and collections.  The official site to purchase tickets is here:


It is not as easy to get to the Vatican as it is to reach many other destinations in Rome.  There is not a metro stop right next to Vatican City.  The Ottaviano-S metro stop is about a five minute walk from the Vatican.  It was under construction when we visited the Vatican in 2024, so we had a much longer walk, but it was open after renovations when I returned in 2025.  You can study the Rome metro maps here to determine the closest open metro stop when visiting the Vatican:


Necropolis Scavi Tour

Visitors are prohibited from taking photographs or video inside the Necropolis Tour, so I only have photos of the outside of the tour.  Once we were brought up inside of St. Peter's Basilica, we were allowed to take photos, so I have plenty of photos of that.  Finding the meeting place was confusing the first time we visited.  

The google maps location of the tour meeting point is here:  Scavi Office


This is the entrance where we met our tour guide for the Scavi tour of the Necropolis




You see a completely different view of Vatican City by doing the Necropolis tour, because even walking to where you meet your Scavi tour guide provides different views than you would see while just walking around St Peter's Square.






This is where we met the tour guide from Viator before she took us to the official Necropolis tour guide.  Again, I DO NOT recommend purchasing your Scavi tour through Viator.
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As far as I know, this location has nothing to do with Viator, it was just a meeting place that they figured would be easy to find, because our tour guide came from elsewhere also.  I do not recommend hiring any tour guide to take you on the Necropolis tour.  All they do is tell you information about the Vatican before dropping you off to the official Necropolis tour guide.  Additionally, Viator changed our tour time only a day before our tour, which meant that we almost missed our entrance to the Vatican Museums.  We had to completely skip touring St. Peter's Basilic and RUN to the entrance to the museum, which is not at all close to St. Peter's Basilica.  The whole event was a bad decision on my part - I should never have purchased a tour of the Necropolis through Viator.  Just pay for a tour directly from the source - it's a lot cheaper and more convenient!

Heading to our tour in 2025 - this time without a Viator tour guide, much cheaper and more convenient!



This is where you enter for the tour

As part of the tour of the Necropolis, the guide shows you what many believe to be the bones of St. Peter.  It took me until my 3rd tour of the Necropolis to realize that they were pointing out a white box which housed bones that they believed were St. Peter's.  It is not actually bones laying there.  I suppose it was lost in translation, but I finally figured out on my third visit what I was actually looking at.

A funny situation that occurred on our first visit was that we were joined by Tim Tebow and his new wife, along with their security team.  I did not know who Tim Tebow was at the time, and my husband didn't recognize him.  As we progressed through the tour, a door opened to one of the rooms where research or restoration was occurring.  The tour guide became very angry and yelled at Tim, that he should not be going into rooms that were not part of the tour.  He explained that he had not opened the door, but that a researcher had left the room.  After our tour, another couple pointed out to us who Mr. Tebow was.  We didn't realize how funny it was at the time that this tour guide had yelled at Mr. Tebow, but we were also struck by how kind he had been in response to being yelled at by her for something he hadn't done.

After she pointed out where the bones of St. Peter were, I was trying to find them.  Still now realizing who Mr. Tebow was, he was standing closest to me so I asked him to help me view the bones because I could not locate them.  He pointed them out, leaning over my shoulder as he pointed in the direction of where the white box was that housed the bones.  My husband still jokes about how I was basically hugged by Tim Tebow in the Vatican Necropolis, but neither of us realized who he was.  My take-away from that entire experience is that he is a very kind and humble man.  

I haven't met any other famous people on my more recent visits to the Necropolis, but I still highly recommend taking the time and paying the very limited money for this experience!  It is a way to see the Vatican in a different way than most of the thousands who visit don't even know about.

St. Peter's Basilica


The Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica, which is only opened during Jubilee Years.  We visited in 2025, a Jubilee Year, so we were able to walk through the Holy Door.




Inside St Peter's Basilica, the beautiful sculpture by Michelangelo, the Pieta, which is probably his most famous sculpture of a religious subject.  He carved it when he was 24 years old and it is the only sculpture that he ever signed.  The Virgin Mary looks down sweetly at the lifeless body of her son Jesus Christ.  






Altar of St. Sebastian, tomb of St. Paul II

This painting, by Domenichino, represents St. Sebastian's martyrdom

The Vestibule Dome of the Baptism Chapel in St Peter's Basilica 


Bernini's bronze Baldachinno located in front of the Papal altar


Underneath Bernini's Baldachinno - the dove, representing the Holy Ghost





The dome was designed by Michelangelo


Monument to Pope Alexander XII by Bernini

St Peter's Chair, or St Peter's Throne dates back to the 1st century and is believed to have actually been used by the apostle Peter.



Inside St. Peter's Basilica

List of Popes Interred at the Basilica





The Vatican Grottos below the main floor of St. Peter's Basilica - this is St. Peter's Sepulcre.  It is blocked off with glass to protect it.




The many people in line to see St. Peter's Sepulcre

Tomb of St. Peter - his bones are actually down in the Necropolis












During the Necropolis tour we actually looked up through this grate at the people above



Memorabilia or Information about Vatican City

Whenever I travel, I purchase earrings from each city or site that I visit.  This is an easy souvenir for me to carry home with me because earrings are very small.  I enjoy wearing my earrings from various places and think about them all day as I'm wearing them.  On my most recent visit to Vatican City, I purchased some small pink bell earrings that I really enjoy.  I've been unable to find an official Vatican gift shop that is online, although there are various shops that operate in or nearby Vatican City and who have an online presence.  Your best bet may be to visit Vatican City yourself and purchase a souvenir.  But you can also find Vatican City memorabilia and information online, such as on Amazon.  Disclaimer:  As an Amazon Associate, I earn on qualifying purchases.  This is at no additional cost to you.








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