The Apostolic Palace, the pope's home that's partly a museum

Plenty of people search for the Apostolic Palace convinced it’s a closed building you only see from outside. That’s half true. The pope’s home isn’t open, but the same palace holds the Sistine Chapel, the Raphael Rooms and the Borgia Apartment, and those you do walk through with a Museums ticket. Here’s what the palace is, which parts you can see, which you can’t and where the Sunday window is.

A palace built over centuries

It isn’t one building but a complex. The first palace beside St Peter’s dates from the 12th and 13th centuries, under Eugene III and Innocent III, at a time when popes still lived at the Lateran. Then came the move to Avignon in 1309 and the return to Rome in 1377, and century after century each pope added wings and halls. Nicholas III, Nicholas V, Alexander VI and Julius II all left their mark on parts that are now museum.

The tall brick block you see on the right of the square is later. Domenico Fontana rebuilt it for Sixtus V in just two years, 1589 and 1590. The pope died shortly before it was finished, and Taddeo Landini completed it under Clement VIII. That block holds the pope’s home and its most famous window. And when Rome became Italian in 1870, the state’s website puts it simply, the pope ‘withdrew to the Vatican’.

Can you visit the Apostolic Palace?

Partly, and the best of it. The Sistine occupies the palace’s first floor. The Raphael Rooms were Julius II’s apartment on the second floor. The Borgia Apartment, Alexander VI’s six rooms, is on the first level. All three are on the standard Vatican Museums ticket, €20 at the door or €25 if booked.

There’s a fourth piece for deep pockets. The Niccoline Chapel, Nicholas V’s, only opens through the Museums’ ‘Reparti Chiusi’, a private opening for €300 plus tickets, for groups of up to ten. I cover it with the other treats in exclusive Vatican experiences.

What no product on the official ticket site sells is the papal apartment, the Sala Regia or the Pauline Chapel. No official page says in so many words that they can’t be visited, but there’s no way to buy it either, and that’s enough for me not to suggest it’s possible.

The pope’s home and his window

The papal apartment is on the Third Loggia, first lived in by Pius X. Since March 2026 it has been Leo XIV’s home, with his study, a library and a small chapel. Before that, for more than ten months, he lived in the Palace of the Holy Office, and his predecessor Francis never used the apartment as a home. I go into all of that in where the pope lives.

The window is the part you can see. According to the Holy See it’s the second from last on the third floor, the study window. From it the pope says the Angelus on Sundays at 12:00, with people in the square, and no ticket is needed. The first Angelus broadcast on radio was on 15 August 1954, under Pius XII.

The ceremonial entrance and the Courtyard of St Damasus

The ceremonial entrance is the Bronze Door, where the right-hand colonnade ends. Like every entrance to the state, it’s watched by the Swiss Guard and the Gendarmerie. From there the Constantine Wing leads to the Scala Regia, the route of papal processions and still the way the pope’s funeral cortege leaves. A few steps away is the stone recalling the attack on John Paul II, which I describe on the page about Bernini’s colonnade.

Inside, the Courtyard of St Damasus is where Swiss Guard recruits are sworn in each year on 6 May. On the facade of the building between that courtyard and the square is the Mater Ecclesiae mosaic, requested by John Paul II after the shooting. The courtyard itself isn’t open.

How I’d see it

I’d make it two outings. One day, the Museums, knowing that in the Sistine, the Raphael Rooms and the Borgia Apartment you’re walking through the palace. Another, Sunday at 12:00, the square, to see the pope at his window. And in between, a look at the Bronze Door. That’s everything the Apostolic Palace lets you see.