For easier and more extensive access to their artistic patrimony, the Vatican Museums offer blind and partially sighted visitors a free service of tactile and multi-sensory tours. They are offered the opportunity to explore casts and a broad selection of sculptures and original works exposed in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican, the Gregoriano Profano Museum, the Gregorian Egyptian Museum and the Ethnological Museum, as well as the Vatican Gardens.
The intention is to enable also the blind and partially sighted to get to know, ichnographically, some of the masterpieces of the Vatican collections with the aid of thermoformed panels and prospective bas-reliefs, produced for the purpose with captions in Braille and/or in large characters.

Phases of the tour 

Syncretic and analytical reading of the works through the use of thermoformed panels and prospective bas reliefs produced ad hoc. Followed by a simulation of the visual/perspective experience to analyse compositional, technical, plastic and chromatic effects.

Listening to poetry and musical pieces which, along with analogue and synaesthetic references (acoustic, olfactory, tactile, etc.) produced by the didactic guides, will evoke the images represented in the work, favouring the passage from a simple knowledge to a deeper perception.

Thanks to the perfect reproductions produced by expert restorers, it will be possible to touch a fragment of the mosaic with the detail of the aureola of Melozzo’s Angel, or a part of the canvas with a detail of the shroud of Caravaggio’s Deposition.

N.B. Guide dogs for the blind may enter provided they are kept on a lead and wear a muzzle. To facilitate access and assistance, visitors wishing to bring their guide dog are requested to inform the Museums several days in advance at education.musei@scv.va.