🇻🇦Vatican City

You just walk in

• There are no border controls between Italy and Vatican City.
• You walk across St Peter's Square from Rome and you have changed country. Nobody looks at anything.
• Whatever admits you to Italy admits you here. There is no Vatican visa and no separate allowance.
• Days here are days in Italy for your Schengen 90/180.
• Vatican City is not in the EU or Schengen as a matter of law, and it makes no practical difference to a visitor.

What is actually checked

The controls here are about behaviour, not nationality.

• Security screening at St Peter's Basilica and the Museums is airport-style, with bag scanning. Expect a queue.
• The dress code is enforced at the entrance - see the everyday section. People are turned away daily.
• Large bags, tripods and knives are refused at the basilica and there is limited cloakroom space.

The Museums

• The Vatican Museums are ticketed and should be booked online well in advance - the walk-up queue can run for hours.
• St Peter's Basilica itself is free and has its own separate, faster-moving security queue.
• They are different entrances on opposite sides of the walls. People routinely queue for the wrong one.

• There is no customs border to cross. The Vatican has no controls of its own, and everyone arrives through Italy, so Italian and EU customs rules are what applied to you on the way in.
• The tax-free shops are not open to visitors. The Annona supermarket and the department store are restricted to Vatican employees, residents and holders of a special card, and the queues you see are staff, not tourists.
• The Vatican Pharmacy is the exception most travellers can use. It sells medicines not licensed in Italy and works on prescriptions, and you can enter it with your passport through the Sant'Anna gate.
• Buying there and carrying goods into Italy is legally an import, because the Vatican is outside the EU customs territory even though nobody checks.
• The euro is legal tender under an agreement with the EU, and Vatican-minted coins are collectors' items rather than something you will be handed as change.

Rome's climate, with none of Rome's shade

The numbers here are Rome's, because the country is less than half a square kilometre inside it. July and August average 31 C by day, and April to May and September to October - 18-26 C - are the months this page picks, the standard two-shoulder Roman answer.

What makes the Vatican a harder August than the rest of Rome is the ground plan. St Peter's Square is open stone with a colonnade round the edge and nothing in the middle; the museum queue forms along a wall on the Viale Vaticano. The rest of Rome has narrow streets, awnings and trees. A 31 C afternoon spent standing in the square is not the same 31 C as a 31 C afternoon in Trastevere, and the dress code - shoulders and knees covered inside the basilica and the museums - is not negotiable on account of the heat.

The wet end of the year is autumn: November takes 141 mm and October 106, against 23 mm in July.

Wednesday is a date, not a coincidence

The other half of timing a visit here has nothing to do with weather. The Papal Audience is held every Wednesday, except when the Pope has other commitments, in St Peter's Square or in the Paul VI Hall, and free tickets are requested through the Prefecture of the Papal Household.

Which of the two venues is used varies, and the square holds many times what the hall does. Either way a Wednesday morning is the busiest the site gets in a normal week, and the basilica's own access is affected by it. If you want the basilica quiet, pick another weekday; if you want the audience, Wednesday is the only day it exists.

It is Rome's network

• Vatican City is 0.44 square kilometres inside Rome, and you walk in past a line on the pavement. Your phone stays on the Italian network it was already using.
• Italy is in the EU, so roam-like-at-home applies: an EU or EEA SIM works at your domestic rates, on your domestic allowance.
• There is no Vatican SIM to buy and no reason to look for one. Vatican City has its own telephone service for the institution, not a consumer mobile network for visitors.
• UK plans are a separate question. Several UK networks reintroduced European roaming charges after Brexit, so check yours rather than assuming.

If you need a travel eSIM, buy Italy

• An Italy plan is the correct product for the whole trip, St Peter's included.
• Buy it for the length of your Rome stay, not for the afternoon inside the walls.

Inside the walls

• The Vatican Museums are dense stone and very crowded, and a signal that works outside can be poor in the galleries. Download your tickets and any audio guide before going in rather than relying on a live connection at the turnstile.
• Queue-time and ticketing all happen on your phone, which is the practical reason to arrive with working data rather than hunting for wi-fi.

eSIM

• An eSIM is live before you land and skips the shop entirely, which on a short trip is the whole argument for it.
• Check your phone takes one. Most flagship phones since 2019 do; most budget models do not.

Practical points

• Keep your home number reachable for two-factor codes. If you swap in a local SIM as your only card, bank apps that text a code to your home number stop working at the worst possible moment. A dual-SIM phone, or an eSIM alongside your home SIM, solves it.
• Wi-fi is widespread in cafes, hotels and stations.

Sockets in Vatican City are Type C, F and L at 230 V, 50 Hz - the Italian arrangement, since the supply and the fittings come from Rome.

• Type L is the three-in-line Italian socket with the earth in the middle; the common bipasso version also takes a Europlug.
• A Schuko plug fits the modern hybrid outlets and not the older narrow ones.
• British, American and Australian plugs need an adapter.
• 230 V, so only American 120 V-only equipment needs a converter.
• There is nowhere to buy an adapter inside the walls, so this is a Rome problem solved before you arrive.
• The Vatican generates some of its own power from the roof of the Nervi hall, but the sockets are ordinary Italian ones on the Roman grid.

The dress code

This is the thing that actually stops people getting in, and it is enforced at the door by staff who do this all day.

• Shoulders must be covered. No vest tops, no strappy dresses, no bare shoulders.
• Knees must be covered. No shorts, no short skirts - this applies to men too, and men in shorts are turned away from St Peter's constantly in July.
• No hats inside the basilica.
• A scarf or a light shawl in your bag solves it and street vendors outside sell them at a markup to people who arrive unprepared.
• The same rules apply at the Museums and at the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistine Chapel

• Silence is required and is enforced by guards who say "Silenzio" out loud, repeatedly.
• Photography is prohibited in the Sistine Chapel specifically - permitted in most of the rest of the Museums.
• It is at the end of a long one-way route through the Museums; budget two to three hours to reach it.

Practical

• Language: Italian in practice, Latin officially. Staff speak English.
• 230 V, 50 Hz, sockets type C, F and L - as in Italy.
• The country is 0.44 km2 with a population of a few hundred. There is no accommodation, no public transport and no ordinary shops - which is why this guide is shorter than the others, and why the Italy page covers the rest.
• Wednesday mornings are the Papal Audience and the square fills; Sunday noon is the Angelus. Both are free and both make everything else slower.

The currency

• Vatican City uses the euro under a monetary agreement with the EU, and mints its own coins.
• Vatican euro coins are minted in tiny numbers and are collectors' items - you will never receive one as change.
• Cards work in the Museums and the shops.

The post office

• The Vatican post office is a working postal service with its own stamps, and posting a card from it is a genuine tradition.
• Post it in the Vatican's own yellow boxes, not Italian ones - a Vatican stamp in an Italian box goes nowhere.
• It has a reputation for being faster than the Italian post, which is a low bar and, by most accounts, true.

Prices

• The Museums have a fixed admission; book online to skip the queue and pay a small booking fee.
• Everything else nearby is Roman tourist pricing. Walk five minutes into Prati for a normal-priced lunch.

Not somewhere you drive. The entire state is 0.44 km2 and closed to visiting traffic.

• There is no visitor parking. The car parks inside are for residents and staff, and St Peter's Square is pedestrian.
• Rome's ZTL zones surround the approach, and a hire car photographed entering one collects a fine weeks later through the rental company.
• The nearest practical parking is Gianicolo or a station car park, and both mean a walk or a bus.
• Italian rules apply outside the walls, including the 0.5 g/l alcohol limit and toll motorways to reach Rome.
• The metro Line A to Ottaviano is how nearly everyone arrives, and it is a five-minute walk from there.

The queue is the risk

• St Peter's Square, the Museums queue and the metro to Ottaviano are heavily worked by pickpockets. This is one of the most reliable spots in Europe for it.
• Bus 64 from Termini has a long-standing reputation and is worth avoiding with valuables.
• Keep bags closed and in front of you, and be alert exactly when you are distracted - looking up, taking a photograph, being jostled in a queue.

Ticket touts

• People selling "skip the line" tickets outside the Museums are numerous and mostly legitimate tour resellers charging a large markup.
• Some are not legitimate at all.
• Book on the official Vatican Museums site before you travel and none of this applies to you.
• Nobody official approaches you in the street to sell a ticket.

Inside

• The Vatican itself is extremely secure with airport-style screening and a large gendarmerie presence.
• Crowds are the practical hazard - the basilica and the Sistine Chapel get very dense, and it is hot in summer.
• There is limited shade in St Peter's Square and the summer queue is fully exposed. Water and a hat matter more than they sound.

The numbers

• 112 works from any phone, free, with no credit and no SIM, and operators handle English.

If you need help

• Report a theft to the police and get a written record. No insurer will pay a claim without one, and obtaining it later from another country is close to impossible.
• A lost passport means the police first, then your embassy.
• Your embassy cannot pay your bills or get you out of jail, but it can issue emergency travel documents, contact your family and provide lists of local lawyers and doctors.

Before you need them

• Save 112 in your phone now, and write your accommodation's address somewhere that does not depend on a charged battery.

• No country has an embassy inside Vatican City - there is no room for one in half a square kilometre. Every embassy to the Holy See sits in Rome, on Italian soil, and so does the embassy you would actually need.

• In practice you are in Rome and the Italian services respond.

• Inside the walls, the Vatican Gendarmerie and the Swiss Guard handle security - approach the nearest officer, who will call whatever is needed.

• Ambassadors to the Holy See are accredited separately from those to Italy, and are not who you contact if you lose a passport - your embassy to Italy in Rome is.