Taking photos in the Vatican, and where they come out best

Almost everyone leaves the Vatican with a phone full of pictures, and almost everyone has a doubt or two about where they’re allowed to take them. The short answer is almost everywhere, without flash, with three places where you can’t. The longer answer has a few details worth knowing before you reach the door, especially if you travel with a tripod, a selfie stick or a drone.

Where you can and can’t, room by room

In the Vatican Museums, photos for personal use are allowed along the whole route, always without flash, which is banned everywhere. The exception is the Sistine Chapel, where no photo or video is allowed on any device, your phone included, and attendants can ask you to delete whatever you’ve recorded.

The basilica works in a similar way. The Fabbrica di San Pietro lets you take photos inside, without flash, on one condition I’d take seriously, respect for services and for other visitors. If Mass is being said at an altar, that chapel isn’t a film set. On the dome you can shoot too, on the climb and from the top.

Below ground it’s a different story. The Vatican Grottoes, free to enter, don’t allow photos, and in the necropolis, the guided visit down to Peter’s tomb, both photos and video are banned.

Why can’t you take photos in the Sistine Chapel?

It’s one of the questions people search for most, and the honest answer is that the official rule doesn’t give a reason. Several explanations do the rounds, but none appears on the museums’ website, so I won’t sell you any of them as fact. What the rule does say is that phones stay off inside and absolute silence is expected, and guides have to give their explanations outside.

I actually think it’s one of the rare museum rules that improves the visit. With no cameras raised, people look up, which is what they came for. My advice is to arrive with the ceiling already read up on and take your last photos in the rooms before.

Tripods, selfie sticks, video and flash

The museums put it in writing. They ban tripods, drones, professional equipment and selfie sticks, and send tripods and video cameras to the free cloakroom. Your phone and an ordinary camera go in without any fuss.

The basilica publishes no rule on tripods or on video, and I won’t make one up. What I do know is that it has no cloakroom and only small bags are allowed up the dome, so a tripod would be with you all day with nowhere to put it down. I’d leave it at the hotel. Everything else that stays at the door, from rucksacks to water bottles, is in how to visit the Vatican.

Drones, best left in the bag

The museums ban drones in writing. For the square and the basilica I haven’t found a published Vatican rule, and I’m not going to tell you there is or isn’t a no-fly zone without a source I’ve seen. In Italy, the areas where you can’t fly a drone are listed on D-Flight, the portal run with ENAC, ENAV and the Interior Ministry, and they can be set temporarily. With that uncertainty, over a sovereign state and above thousands of people, my view is simple. I wouldn’t fly it.

The spots I’d pick for the picture

The first is right at the top. From the summit of St Peter’s dome you get the whole oval of the square, Via della Conciliazione heading for the Tiber and the gardens on the other side. It’s €17 by the stairs or €22 with the lift to the terraces, and you still have 320 steps to go after that.

Inside the museums I’d pick two. The Gallery of Maps, 120 metres of gilded vault that comes out far better early in the morning with fewer people, and the double spiral staircase, shot looking up at the skylight. Which of the two spiral staircases is the one in all the photos I explain in the Bramante staircase.

Outside, the approach along Via della Conciliazione, best from Piazza Pia, pedestrianised since December 2024, and the Swiss Guard at the Arch of the Bells, to the left of the façade. And if you pay for the gardens, the dome framed by pines, the picture hardly anyone has. The colonnade’s perspective trick is covered in St Peter’s Square.