The Vatican Archives and Library, what they are and what you can see

The question almost everyone asks is if you can visit, and the short answer is no. Neither the Vatican Library nor the Archives that were called Secret for centuries run tourist visits. I think that answer sells them short if it stops there, though, because there’s plenty worth understanding about both and a couple of ways to peek in. Here’s what they are, why one was called secret, who actually gets in and what you can see on an ordinary Museums ticket.

Two institutions with intertwined pasts

The first thing to know is that they’re two different bodies, even if they started out together. From the 4th century the Roman Church kept a Scrinium that served as both library and archive, and that first collection was scattered in the early 13th century. The modern Library dates from the 15th century, while the Archives began in 1612 as a sort of department of the Library before going their own way.

Today each has its own website, access rules and holdings. The Library mostly keeps manuscripts and books, the Archives the popes’ records of government. For Library readers, the first visit means leaving photo ID at the Gendarmerie permit office by St Anne’s Gate.

The Library, from a humanist pope to 1.6 million books

Nicholas V, pope from 1447 to 1455, decided to open the popes’ Latin, Greek and Hebrew codices to scholars, and grew them from 350 to about 1,200. The formal founding came with Sixtus IV, who on 15 June 1475 signed the bull giving it a librarian and the money to run it. He’s the same pope behind the Sistine Chapel, a coincidence that tells me a lot about what the Vatican wanted to be back then.

Sixtus V had Domenico Fontana put up a new building in the late 16th century, the one still in use, with the Sistine Hall on its upper floor, 70 metres long and 15 wide and painted top to bottom. Whole libraries then arrived, such as Heidelberg’s Palatine library in 1623 and Queen Christina of Sweden’s in 1690, followed in 1902 by the Barberini collection with over 11,000 manuscripts. Today the Library holds some 180,000 manuscript and archival volumes, 1,600,000 printed books, around 9,000 incunabula and 300,000 coins and medals.

Why were they called the Vatican Secret Archives?

This is the misunderstanding I most enjoy unpicking. In 1611 Paul V created the Novum Archivum inside the Apostolic Palace, next to today’s Sistine Hall, gathering records from the Library, the Apostolic Camera and the archive of Castel Sant’Angelo. Its official history begins on 31 January 1612, when he appointed Baldassarre Ansidei as custodian. The founding name was the Vatican Apostolic Archives, and from the mid-17th century «Secret Archives» took over.

The word came from the Latin «secretum», from the verb to separate. It meant an archive kept apart from the others and reserved to the Pope and his officials, his private archive. Over time «secret» came to be heard as concealed, with a sinister edge, and on 22 October 2019 Francis restored the original name without changing anything about its structure or mission. I find that a lesson in communication. Centuries of suspicion over a word that never meant what we assume.

What the Archives hold and how far you can read

Roughly twelve centuries of documents, from the 8th to the 20th century, in more than 600 collections and 85 kilometres of shelving. Part of it sits in a two-storey bunker beneath the Pine Cone Courtyard of the Museums, opened by John Paul II on 18 October 1980. The Tower of the Winds, built in 1578-1580 and used as an observatory for Gregory XIII’s calendar reform, belongs to the Archives too.

Not everything has always stayed put. In 1810 Napoleon carted the papal archives off to Paris, some 3,239 crates, and their return, begun in 1814-1815, came with losses. In 1881 Leo XIII opened the Archives to scholars of any nationality or faith, and since 1924 popes have released records a whole pontificate at a time. The latest opened is Pius XII’s, from 2 March 2020, so today you can read up to October 1958.

Can you visit the Vatican Library?

Not on a regular basis. The Library says plainly that it doesn’t offer regular public visits and that its historic rooms open only for special events. Since November 2021 it has staged temporary exhibitions in the Barberini Room and the Sistine Hall, bookable online up to 48 hours ahead, usually on Friday evenings and Saturdays. The last, «En Route», closed on 20 December 2025, and as of 24 September 2026 nothing new has been announced. If one coincides with your trip, I’d rate it above almost any paid tour you’ll be offered on the street.

To work there, the Library admits qualified researchers, university lecturers, doctoral candidates and, exceptionally, final-year students who can show they need material held only there. The Archives ask for a master’s or equivalent and a letter of introduction, and the pass is free. Over 1,200 scholars from about sixty countries use it every year. So it isn’t a closed club either, it’s a research room with entry requirements.

What you do see on a Museums ticket

Here’s the chink in the door. The official Vatican Museums map shows the Library Museums at number 15 and the Room of the Aldobrandini Wedding at number 13, decorated by Guido Reni in 1608. A guide published by the Museums themselves in 2013 describes the route out of the Sistine crossing several rooms of the old Library, among them the Pauline Rooms, the small Sistine Rooms with gifts to the popes and the Gallery of Urban VIII with its globes and maps. The route changes often, so I’d treat that as a pointer rather than a promise.

The Sistine Hall, on the other hand, is off limits to museum visitors, since it’s only reached from the study rooms, though the Museums do offer a virtual tour of it. My advice is simple. Buy a standard ticket through Vatican City tickets, look for those two numbers on the map and be wary of any tour promising the secret archives, since no official website allows for it, as I explain in Vatican scams to avoid. And if you want the backstory to all this, the history of Vatican City puts it in context.