The Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums constitute one of the world's greatest collections of arts, a vast storehouse of ancient, Renaissance, and modern statuary, painting, decorative arts, and sundry papal odds and ends.

The best- known and most noteworthy attractions in the collection are the Museo Pio Clementino with its celebrated masterpieces of ancient sculpture, the brilliantly frescoed Apartamenti Borgia, the Stanze di Raffaello, Michelangelo's incomparable Cappella Sistina and the eclectic Pinacoteca.

Collections off the main path include specialized galleries of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman art, the exhibition rooms of the Vatican Library,and the open Museo Storico with papal relics and carriages. Collections of tapestries, maps, and modern religious art lie along corridors toword the Sistine Chapel.