I give Vatican Museums one star, not for the museum itself, rather because one non-professional, rude Vatican Museums' ticket agent.
On May 21, 2015, we visited Vatican Museums, which is one of the places we wanted to visit for a long time. Vatican Museums is well known around the world with such great reputations. However, our high expectation was completely ruined by a Vatican Museums' ticket agent.
We booked our tickets more than a month ago from Vatican Museums' on-line services (highly recommended). When we arrived at one of the ticket window with our booking voucher in hand, a big, bald, (or very short hair), tall male ticket agent (I believe that he might be the only male agent on duty on May 21, 2015 at 8:41 am) was behind the window and he was on the cell phone. He ignored me and kept talking on the cell phone although through the glass window, he could see the visitors and me lined up waiting for him. I waited and waited for at least 5 minutes, he finally got off the phone, and without greeting and without even looked at me, he took my booking voucher and gave a paper receipt. I asked him "Is this the tickets?" he told me yes. We trusted him and walked all the way up stairs (a very lone walk). At the entrance, a security guard stopped us and told us that the receipt is not the tickets. We were confused at that time because that ticket agent firmly told us that it is the tickets. The security guard kindly walked with us to go back all the way to the ticket window, found the same big, bald (or very short hair) male ticket agent and asked him what was going on. The agent looked me, smiled this time, and printed the real tickets for me at this time.
The ticket agent did this on purpose. Because while I was waiting, even I did not say anything, however, my face might clearly tell him: "you should not talk on the phone during the working hours and should not let visitors waiting for you for a long time. You should have full filled your work duty." He did not like the way my face looked. He purposely did not give me the correct tickets, he purposely made our visit miserable, he purposely forced us to walk up stairs/downstairs twice, and he wasted our valuable time.
More importantly, what he did has left a very bad taste to us. The days we spent in Rome and in Vatican City were great. We met many friendly locale people; however, this ticket agent had given a bad reputation for Vatican Museums.
Vatican Museums is a great place and all the remaining staff members were friendly. However, there is one bed apple in that place. Be careful if you planning to go to Vatican Museums. read more