“An adult will never enter a museum if he has not done so at least once as a child” (Pierre Bourdieu).
The Educational Activities Office designs and develops educational programmes for the development of effective teaching plans that comply with the National Guidelines for the school curriculum for all levels of education (Ministerial Decree 254/2012).

The educational offering has been updated over the last two years, concentrating on the novelty of itinerant workshops, which enable students to discover the exceptional heritage of the papal collections, even in sectors generally not accessible to the public at large, through creative, play-based and multi-sensory activities. The broad choice continues with thematic visits covering the history of the various collections in relation to the school curriculum, which every institution can access in the different languages available. As part of a policy of welcoming, involving and engaging families, the educational programme also promotes a wide range of fun, entertaining and interactive family tours, led by our museum educators, in which adults and children challenge each other to search for natural treasures in the Gardens and artistic treasures in the Museums.
The many tasks of the Educational Activities Office also include the selection, management and training of educational workers and museum educators (who today number 300), establishing prerequisites for access, ensuring the quality standards of the service provided and setting improvement objectives. Training and refresher courses are organized for them annually, in collaboration with the curators of the departments, as well as days of debate and monitoring of services or sharing of cultural projects.

In order to guarantee access to knowledge and culture, it is necessary to remove physical, cognitive, psychological and social barriers: accessibility for all visitors has always been one of the oldest priorities of museums, and has always been included in the General Regulations. Admission for visitors with disabilities equal to or greater than 67% (as per Law 104/1992) is guaranteed free of charge and with priority access, together with a companion. Wheelchairs are available at the entrance and can be used throughout the visit, along a fully accessible route. Lifts, stair lifts and ramps were installed in 1989 to allow this group of users to visit the Museums independently.
Since 2010, the Office has developed an innovative accessible programme of free tactile tours for blind and visually impaired visitors, with specialized staff who adopt a multisensory and synaesthetic approach aimed at making sculpture accessible through direct contact with the original work or specially-made casts, and painting through thermoformed panels and perspective bas-reliefs. A tour programme has also been created for deaf people, in Italian Sign Language (LIS), American Sign Language (ASL) and International Sign (IS), conducted by specially trained deaf educational operators.

“Those who visit the Vatican Museums have an opportunity to be ‘immersed’ in a concentrated ‘theology through images’ by pausing in this shrine of art and faith”: with this message on 23 November 2006, on the occasion of an audience with employees of the Museums, Pope Benedict XVI drew attention to the high mission of evangelization and education entrusted to the Vatican Museums.
To visit the Vatican Museums, with the immensity of their artistic patrimony, means embarking on what Saint Augustine defined as the Via Pulchritudinis – the way of beauty, capable of instructing, moving and raising the heart towards God. From this perspective, the Educational Activities Office proposes the programme Art and Faith, modulated according to the liturgical times, as a tool of spiritual and cultural accompaniment for visitors along this extraordinary journey.