Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel

A renowned papal chapel featuring Michelangelo's masterpieces, its stunning painted interiors are a pinnacle of Renaissance art and a key Vatican ritual site.
The Sistine Chapel is at once a papal chapel, the setting for conclaves and one of the most celebrated painted interiors in the world. Built under Sixtus IV in the late 15th century, it became inseparable from Michelangelo’s ceiling and Last Judgment, which transformed the space into a high point of Renaissance art. The chapel’s function within Vatican ritual gives the paintings an added gravity. It remains both a working sacred space and a major work of art.