The Vatican Museums, which includes the Sistine Chapel, has been closed to the public as Vatican City prepares for the gathering of cardinals who will vote to elect a new pope following the death of Pope Francis on April 28.
The Vatican has not announced a date that the tourist attractions will reopen, as there is no fixed time limit for the election, which is officially known as a conclave. Some conclaves have lasted weeks—the longest in palpal history lasted almost three years—though modern conclaves, like those that elected Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI, saw Vatican City closed for less than a week. Pope Francis was buried on Saturday and a nine-day mourning period is required before the conclave commences, per AP News.
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The Vatican Museums encompass a centuries-old collection of art and artifacts, including treasures of Renaissance and Baroque painting and sculpture, as well as modern masterworks by Paul Gauguin, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Its complex of historic structures, like the Raphael Rooms, named after the series of frescos by the Renaissance painter that adorn its walls, are some of the most-touristed cultural attractions in the world—6.8 people visited in 2024, per Vatican reports. The new pope will not only be charged with stewarding the Catholic Church’s mission, but will also become the proprietor of these vast properties.
Pope Francis was a popular figure within and outside the Catholic Church, given his principles of austerity and altruism, as well as his outspoken stance on the evils of war and occupation. He also had, by modern standards, an outsize presence in the art world: In 2024, he became the first Supreme Pontiff to visit the Venice Biennale when he arrived by helicopter to the Women’s Prison on the island of Giudecca, which then-hosted an art exhibition made in collaboration with inmates.
Speaking to the crowd gathered at the prison, he cited the late Catholic nun and activists Corita Kent—as well as artists Frida Kahlo, and Louise Bourgeois—as women whose works have “something important to teach us.”
“The world needs artists. This is demonstrated by the multitude of people of all ages who frequent art venues and events,” Francis said, as ARTnews reported at the time. “I beg you, dear artists, to imagine cities that do not yet exist on the maps: cities where no human being is considered a stranger.”
Also during the Pope Francis administration, the Vatican opened for the first time a conversation about the return of colonial-era artifacts held in the Vatican Museums collections. He returned to Greece three fragments of the Parthenon sculptures that were held in the Vatican Museums’s collection for two centuries, and in his inaugural public address of the debate, called the restitution “the right gesture” for institutions to make when possible.
