Rise early to see the Vatican at its best

The sun has only just risen in Rome and we are standing bleary-eyed in a short queue outside the Vatican. Our guide, Tonia, takes us through security, and within minutes we are in a nearly empty Sistine Chapel. In an hour it will be crammed with tourists — sweating, gawping, getting in each other’s way. Vatican officials will be shushing and clapping to quieten the chatter. Now, though, we are free to contemplate Michelangelo’s swirl of naked bodies in peace.

Michelangelo claimed that he painted the ceiling entirely on his own. In fact, Tonia explains, he started off with 15 helpers, though he got rid of them all along the way. He ‘fought everyone’, she says. ‘On the one hand he was amazing but in human relationships, no.’ He was brave, she says, in accepting the job from Pope Julius II in the first place: Julius was a ‘dreadful pope’ who ‘hit Michelangelo with a stick’.

After the Sistine Chapel we are taken around the rest of the Vatican museums, but there is a great risk of aesthetic overload. There are the famous Raphaels and Caravaggios, of course, as well as ancient Roman sculptures. But forget to look up and you will miss dazzling Mannerist and Baroque frescoes. Even the floor you are stepping on is a second-century mosaic.

It seems a great privilege to walk through the galleries with only a few other people around. The fee isn’t ludicrous, either; a ‘before-hours’ tour, shared with up to 20 people, is £38 a head, while private tours for two are £135 each through Italy With Us. If you are planning an extravagant birthday present, you can have the whole place to yourself for £1,900, or for the super-rich there are other options. Justin Bieber, for instance, paid £15,000 for his tour, which also gave him access to the Apostolic Palace, the Pope’s official residence.