The Vatican Museum is a unique architectural ensemble, which was created nearly two thousand years ago. Magnificent palaces and halls, galleries and the chapel where the treasures of human culture are stored... Ancient monuments and Christian shrines, frescoes and mosaics, sculptures and painting masterpieces. Among them there are pieces of Raphael and Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Veronese, Van Dyck and Caravaggio.

The Vatican Museums are public museums of fine arts and sculpture in the Vatican City, which provide pieces of an extensive collection of the Roman Catholic Church. Museums were founded in the 16 century be the Pope Julius II. The Vatican Museums occupy a part of the papal palaces built since 1200. First you will go up by a majestic spiral ramp to buy a ticket in the ticket office. After you are let in, you can choose a route around the museum according to the four-coloured index (A, B, C, D). The culmination of all of the five routes is the Sistine Chapel. Most likely, that one, two, or even 20 visits are not enough to view all the richness of the Vatican. Here is an overview of only the most illustrative samples represented in the museums of masterpieces.

The Borja Appartments. Decorated with frescoes from biblical scenes, which were created by Pinturiccio and his students, these rooms have been set up for the Pope Alexander VI (who had bad reputation of the Pope Borja). Perhaps they are poorly lit, but pride themselves with splendour and magnificent style. At the end of Raphael rooms there is the Nicholas V chapel, an intimate room, ornamented with frescoes by Dominican monk Fra Anzheliko, the most sacred of all Italian artists.

Chiaramonti Museum. Founded by Pope Pius VII, also known as the Chiaramonti, the Museum consists of a corridor, Lapidary Galleries and the New Wing. In the corridor there are more than 800 Greco-Roman pieces, including statues, reliefs and sarcophagi. The Lapidariy Gallery has about 5000 of Christian and pagan inscriptions. In the New Wing you can admire the pice of "Nile ", an excellent reproduction of the long lost original and one of the finest works of sculpture of antiquity times.

Collection of Modern and Contemporary Religious Art. This museum, opened in 1973, is the first invasion of American artists at the Vatican. At least 12 of the 55 rooms are dedicated to painters of America. All selected works are based on "moral and religious values" of authors. Here represented a 1,5-meter bronze sculpture "Isaac" by Leonard Baskin, as well as the works of Picasso, Chagall, Gauguin, Henry Moore, Kandinsky and others.