The Vatican Museums contain some of the greatest Western art in the world. Thousands of works of art have been collected by successive popes since the early fifteenth century, and all are housed in a complex of buildings in the papal palace and elsewhere in the Vatican. With several museums, the Library exhibition rooms, and various suites of Renaissance painting - of which the most important are Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and the Stanze, decorated by Raphael and others - the visitor is admitted to some of the most beautiful rooms in existence. Perhaps most famous for classical sculpture, such as the Apollo Belvedere and the Belvedere Torso, the Vatican Museums also have rich collections of, for example, early Christian art, jewellery and vestments. This selection of 100 masterpieces gives the visitor and reader a privileged insight into the core of the Vatican's incomparable collections.
