Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums are renewing their appointment with the concert series “Musica ai Musei” (Music at the Museums) for 2026: a contribution to beauty that reaffirms their vocation to preserve heritage, but also to be a living place of encounter between art, faith and culture. From 14 March to 27 November, eleven afternoon concerts will accompany visitors to the Vatican Museums and the Castel Gandolfo Museum Complex.

The programme proposes a varied musical journey: alongside the thematic concerts, which give voice to the sentiments of spiritual life, there will be a return of performances by marching bands, bearers of tradition and a sense of community. There will also be performances by young talents from Italian conservatories, to whom the festival offers a prestigious stage. In this intertwining of spirituality, tradition and new energy, music becomes a common thread that accompanies visitors in a shared cultural experience through the song of the seasons.

Thanks to the collaboration of the Comitato Nazionale Italiano Musica - CIDIM (Italian National Music Committee), the bands of the Vatican Gendarmerie Corps, the Pontifical Swiss Guard, the Pontifical Band, and the National Band of the Penitentiary Police will also perform. The event will be further enhanced by the participation of the “Maria Di Pasquale” E.T.S. Cultural Music Association, which will offer contributions retracing the history of music through the seasons, with pieces by Antonio Vivaldi, Giovan Battista Pergolesi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Niccolò Paganini and Astor Piazzolla.

The initiative, organised in collaboration with GetYourGuide and included in the admission ticket, enriches the Vatican Museums’ calendar of cultural events as an opportunity to share beauty and bear witness to the universality of the language of music. "A journey of sound that follows the rhythm of time, intertwining nature and art, interiority and celebration, contemplation and shared joy", emphasises Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums.