Visiting St Peter's Basilica in 2026

Most people arrive at St Peter’s expecting to queue for a ticket, and there isn’t one. The basilica is free, it opens at seven in the morning and you simply walk in once you are through security. That leaves the real planning question, which is what to look for once you are inside a church roughly 187 metres long, where it is easy to spend an hour staring up at the dome and miss the four works that matter most.

Getting in, from security to dress code and bags

Security is run by the Italian state police, the Polizia di Stato, in the right-hand arm of the colonnade as you face the basilica. That is where the queue forms in high season. The basilica does not publish a waiting time and only warns that the checks can cause queues and delays. Wednesdays (the papal audience) and Sundays (the Angelus at noon) are its busiest days.

The dress code is specific. Men need long trousers, women need a skirt below the knee or trousers, and everyone needs covered shoulders. There is no cloakroom and no left-luggage, so travel light. Photos are fine without flash, and there are ramps and lifts for visitors with disabilities.

The €7 online booking is not an entry ticket, since entry is free anyway. It buys a guaranteed time slot and a digital audio guide that plays on your own phone in seven languages. The older hand-held audio guide can be hired at the desk in the portico, in eleven languages. For everything that happens before you reach the square, from the metro to what you can and can’t carry, see my guide on how to visit the Vatican.

Four works worth finding inside

Michelangelo’s Pietà comes first for most visitors. The official site dates it to 1498, when the sculptor was 23, and says he carved it from a single block of Carrara marble in only nine months, commissioned by Cardinal Jean de Bilhères Lagraulas. It is the only work Michelangelo ever signed, on the sash across the Virgin’s chest.

The bronze statue of St Peter dates from the 13th century and is attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio. It is the original, not a copy, and it is the one whose foot pilgrims touch as they pass.

Bernini’s baldacchino, in bronze, stands over the papal altar, directly above the apostle’s tomb. It went back on show after restoration on 27 October 2024. At the Altar of the Confession, the Niche of the Pallia corresponds to the small second-century shrine built over the tomb, flanked by gilded bronze statues of St Peter and St Paul made by Ambrogio Buonvicino in 1617.

The Chair of St Peter is Bernini’s gilded bronze monument, finished in 1666 after ten years’ work for Alexander VII. The bronzes weigh 74 tonnes, the whole piece rises 14.74 metres, and the dove in the window sits about 20 metres up. Inside it is a wooden chair with ninth-century ivory friezes. On 22 February each year it is lit by more than a hundred candles.

Who built St Peter’s?

No single architect. Julius II laid the first stone on 18 April 1506, on the spot now occupied by the pier of St Veronica, to replace the fourth-century basilica built by Constantine. The work took more than a century and spanned 20 pontificates. The Fabbrica di San Pietro lists Fra’ Giovanni Giocondo, Raphael, Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Michelangelo, Vignola, Giacomo della Porta and Carlo Maderno, and its FAQ adds Bramante and Bernini.

Maderno built the façade between 1608 and 1612. The statues along the top show Christ, John the Baptist and eleven apostles, because St Peter is represented inside. There are more than 40 altars, and the Fabbrica gives the height as 136 metres to the top of the dome, which you can climb by stairs or part-way by lift.

Mass, confession and the entrance for worshippers

This is a working church. Mass is said from 7am at the Altar of St Joseph, the Altar of the Chair and the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, where the 8.30am Mass is followed by Eucharistic adoration until 6.45pm. The full timetable is in the table on this page.

If you are going to pray rather than sightsee, there is a separate route, the Percorso Oranti. It starts in Via di Porta Angelica, is signposted in yellow, is staffed by the Fabbrica twelve hours a day and enters through the Grottoes. Papal Masses and the Wednesday audience need a free ticket booked in advance, which I cover in the guide to seeing the Pope.

The Vatican Grottoes, free and often skipped

Beneath the nave are the Vatican Grottoes, open daily from 9am to 6pm and free. There are no guided tours and no photos. The vaults were built in 1590 and 1591 to carry the Renaissance floor, and 20th-century chapels were added later, among them the Irish, Polish and Mexican chapels. Pius XII is buried here, as is Benedict XVI, since 5 January 2023, in the tomb that John Paul II occupied from 2005 to 2011.

Around 91 popes lie in the basilica and the Grottoes combined. Pope Francis is not among them. He was buried in Santa Maria Maggiore on 26 April 2025, the first pope in more than a century to be laid to rest outside the Vatican. Deeper still, 3 to 11 metres below the nave, is the Vatican necropolis and St Peter’s tomb, which you can only see on a booked tour.

New for 2026, the 400th anniversary

The anniversary of the consecration runs through 2026 and closes on 18 November with a solemn Mass led by Leo XIV. The year has brought a new Way of the Cross by Manuel Dürr (unveiled on 20 February), an app that translates the liturgy into 60 languages and a booking system built into the basilica’s website. The opening of the Gregorian and Clementine domes and of the terraces, with multimedia displays, has also been announced, but as of 24 September 2026 the booking site shows no price or date for them.

What you can already see is Pétros ení, an immersive exhibition in the Octagonal Rooms, inside one of the piers that hold up the dome and open to the public for the first time. It grew out of the digital twin of the basilica that the Fabbrica launched with Microsoft in November 2024, built from more than 400,000 photographs. It keeps the same hours as the dome, and the combined ticket with the basilica costs €22.

Two more things to know this year. The Holy Door has been closed since 6 January 2026, when Leo XIV brought the Jubilee to an end, and it only reopens in a Holy Year. The Treasury Museum also remains temporarily closed while its new layout is completed.