The Sistine Chapel is located within the Apostolic Palace, which is where the pope lives. It makes regular appearances on television as the home of the papal conclaves, which are the deliberations that go on before a new pope is elected.

When you enter Vatican City with St. Peter's Basilica directly before you (as almost everyone does), the Sistine Chapel will be to your right, inside the Vatican Museums. The chapel itself is toward the end of the guided tour of the museums that is well worth its purchase price. As with St. Peter's Basilica, you will be required to meet a dress code. No bare backs or shoulders, no bare feet, and no exposed knees.

If you plan to visit the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel during a time when lots of tourists are expected, then the official Vatican website you should visit first is http://biglietteriamusei.vatican.va/musei/tickets/. Pay the online booking fee and print out your tickets at home before you even get on the plane to Europe. Your tickets will include a time when you are allowed to enter the museums through a special line, which often has about twenty people in it as opposed to several thousand people in the regular line. You can make reservations for English-speaking guided tours through the website, too. The advance-purchase surcharges can save you hours of waiting once you arrive.

Construction

The chapel as it stands today was completed in 1481 after about eight years of construction. It is not the original; that was demolished to make way after it fell into a state of disrepair. The current chapel appears to be similar in proportion to the original, which records indicate existed as early as the 1360s.

Outside, the Sistine Chapel doesn't look nearly as impressive as buildings such as St. Peter's Basilica. The chapel has a brick fa çade with no decorations or exterior entrances (you enter through the Papal Palace). Inside, though, grandeur reigns; the chapel's walls have served as canvases for some of the most impressive artistic works in modern human history.

Artworks

There are frescoes and tapestries throughout the Sistine Chapel, all done by various and combinations of revered Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli. The most famous works inside the chapel are Michelangelo's frescoes on the ceiling and his end-wall composition The Last Judgment.

Michelangelo's Frescoes

Pope Julius II actually wanted Michelangelo to paint the twelve apostles on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but the artist lobbied for a more substantial challenge that included representations of creation, man's downfall, and the promise of salvation. The resulting work took nearly four years to complete — Michelangelo worked on it between 1508 and 1512 — and incorporated more than 300 figures. Some of the scenes within the entire ceiling fresco are famous unto themselves, including Creation of Adam, which shows a bearded, elderly God touching his right index finger to Adam's left hand.

The Last Judgment

Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint The Last Judgment on the Sistine Chapel's altar wall, but it was Pope Paul III who oversaw the work after Clement died. The work took the artist from 1534 until 1541 to complete, depicting the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse.

Interestingly, the scene as it appears today is not exactly how Michelangelo painted it. He was true to anatomical form in his renderings, but they were later deemed obscene and ordered blurred, work undertaken by one of his apprentices. Because he painted loincloths over some of Michelangelo's depictions of genitals, the apprentice earned the nickname “the breeches maker.”

Raphael's Tapestries

Renaissance painter and architect Raphael Sanzio (known today almost exclusively by his first name) was commissioned in 1515 to create a series of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel. Pope Leo X wanted the ten tapestries, called Acts of the Apostles, to fill the lower portion of the chapel's walls, and it took weavers four years to complete the large works that Raphael designed.

Interestingly, Michelangelo and Raphael were competitors in the art scene of their time, and thus Raphael went to great lengths to try to ensure that his tapestries would “outdo” Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes. As the tapestries only hang in the Sistine Chapel for limited time periods nowadays, you will have to get lucky with the timing of your vacation in order to judge for yourself which artist's work is the most enduring.