Three floors, and most visitors only know about one
St Peter’s goes down as well as up, and the vocabulary defeats almost everyone.
The Grottoes and the Scavi are not the same place, they are not on the same level, and only one of them requires anything of you in advance. One reviewer states the anatomy more clearly than most published guides manage.
“The actual Tomb of St. Peter is under the Grottos. I was lucky enough to have visited the tomb during a Scavi tour. Under the Grottos is absolutely amazing, visiting the Papal Tombs was incredible also.” — YouTube
| Level | What is there | How you get in | Cost |
|---|
| Basilica floor | The nave, the Pietà, Bernini's canopy over the tomb | Walk in, after security | Free |
| Vatican Grottoes | Papal tombs, directly beneath the floor | Walk in, no booking — but the entrance is genuinely hard to find | Free |
| Scavi / Necropolis | The Roman cemetery and the tomb of St Peter, one level lower again | Written request to the Excavations Office. Approval is not guaranteed | Reported around €20 |
Price from a single visitor report in April 2025, following a stated rate change; treat as an order of magnitude. Source: Vatican Tour Research Corpus 2026.
The practical consequence of the confusion is that visitors who wanted the tomb of St Peter book nothing, walk down into the Grottoes, see the papal tombs, and leave believing they saw it. They saw the level above it.
The Grottoes are free — if you can find the door
Nothing stands between you and the papal tombs except the entrance itself, which moves and is poorly signed. Several reviewers describe searching for it after a first failed attempt, and the clearest account has visitors leaving the Basilica entirely and re-entering from outside. Reviews also put the opening at around 10am, later than the Basilica itself, which catches out anyone arriving at opening for the quiet hour.
“Wanting to check out the Vatican Grottoes, I returned a couple days later, but had a hard time finding the entrance. Currently, you have to exit through the front, turn left, go down the stairs outside, and turn left again.” — TripAdvisor, 5 stars
We reproduce that as one visitor’s description rather than as directions, because the arrangement evidently changes. The durable advice is to ask a steward inside rather than assume the entrance is where a map says.
The Scavi is not a ticket. It is an application
This is the part that catches people, and it is structural rather than bureaucratic pedantry. You do not buy the Scavi tour; you write to the Excavations Office and ask, giving dates, group size and language, and you wait. Numbers are capped tightly and approval is not guaranteed. Fifty items in the corpus discuss this process, and what they show is a system whose response time is essentially unpredictable.
How long the Excavations Office took to reply, case by case
Same afternoon by phone, historichours
Emailed, replied same day 2022hours
Friday email, Monday reply twice, same visitor3 days
Confirmed eventually 20255 months
Applied twice, no answernever
Individual reported cases, not a distribution — there are too few to average. The point is the spread: the same office and the same process producing outcomes from hours to silence.
Documented accounts from 2022–2025. Source: Vatican Tour Research Corpus 2026.
“I’ve booked the Scavi tour twice. On both occasions I applied about 3 months in advance and got a reply first thing Monday morning after emailing them the previous Friday afternoon. Very quick.” — YouTube, February 2025
“How do you get the Scavi tickets? I applied months ago and never got an answer. I emailed them twice.” — YouTube, March 2024
Those two accounts describe the same office within a year of each other. That is the finding: there is no lead time that reliably works, only lead times that give you more chances. Apply as early as your dates are firm, accept that silence is a possible outcome, and plan a trip that is complete without it.
Whether it is worth the trouble
On rating, yes — with a caveat about sample size that we want stated plainly rather than buried. The Scavi averages 4.68 and the Grottoes 4.54, but on only 31 and 24 ratings respectively, against 375 for the dome. Those numbers are too thin to rank the three confidently. What they support is a weaker but still useful claim: across everyone who got in and said something, essentially nobody reports regretting it.
How the underground rates against the rest of the site
Scavi / Necropolis4.68 ★ n=31
Vatican Grottoes4.54 ★ n=24
St Peter's Basilica overall3.94 ★ n=1,387
Read the top two bars with their sample sizes in mind: 31 and 24 ratings are far too few to rank confidently against the dome's 375. What they do show is that nobody comes back disappointed.
Bars start at 3.9. Source: Vatican Tour Research Corpus 2026.
There is also a self-selection effect here even stronger than the dome’s. People who write to an office months ahead and wait for approval are unusually motivated before they arrive. Treat these ratings as evidence that the experience delivers for people who want it, not as evidence that it would deliver for everyone.
The verdict
Send the request early and forget about it. The Scavi is the one thing at the Vatican that cannot be solved with money or planning, only with lead time and luck, which makes it the opposite of everything else in this research — and the reason it should be the first email you send and the last thing you count on. Meanwhile the Grottoes cost nothing, need no permission, and hold the papal tombs, so if the answer never comes you have not lost the underground entirely. Just do not confuse the two and think you have seen the tomb.
Common questions
❓ What is the difference between the Vatican Grottoes and the Scavi?
They are two different levels. The Grottoes sit directly beneath the Basilica floor and hold the papal tombs; they are free and need no booking. The Scavi is the Roman necropolis one level lower again, containing the tomb of St Peter itself, and requires an approved written request. Visitors who see the Grottoes without booking anything have not seen the tomb of St Peter.
❓ How do you book the Scavi tour?
By writing to the Vatican Excavations Office with your dates, group size and preferred language, then waiting for a reply that may or may not come. It is a request rather than a purchase, numbers are strictly limited, and approval is not guaranteed. Reviewers report a cost around twenty euros once confirmed, though rates change without notice.
❓ How far in advance should I apply for the Scavi?
As early as your dates are certain, and expect no consistency. Documented cases in the corpus range from a reply within hours to a confirmation after five months to two applications that were never answered at all. Applying three months ahead has worked for some visitors and failed for others, so treat early application as improving your odds rather than securing a place.
❓ Are the Vatican Grottoes worth visiting on their own?
Yes, and they are the sensible fallback if the Scavi request goes unanswered. They are free, require no permission, and contain the tombs of around ninety popes. The main practical difficulty reported is finding the entrance, which is poorly signed and has moved — asking a steward inside the Basilica is more reliable than following directions written by a previous visitor.
Author and Method
Research and analysis by the Intercoper Curator Team for VaticanTourGuides. Reviewed by Mario Dalo, founder of Intercoper.
Dataset: 22,771 items from 7 platforms, 99.5% enriched with per-item topic tagging and sentiment analysis.
Relevant to this article: 179 on-topic items mentioning the Scavi, the necropolis or the tomb of St Peter, of which 31 carry a star rating; and 51 items mentioning the Grottoes, of which 24 carry a rating. Source mix for the Scavi is Reddit 109, TripAdvisor 22, YouTube 21, Quora 18, with the remainder spread across other platforms — a planning conversation rather than a review conversation, which is consistent with the subject being an application rather than a product.
The two ratings this article reports are based on 31 and 24 observations. That is well below the threshold at which we would normally publish a comparison, and we show them only alongside their sample sizes and with the limitation stated in the body text. They are not sufficient to rank the Scavi above the dome, and the article does not claim they are.
Reply times are presented as individually documented cases rather than as a distribution, because five accounts cannot describe a process. They are included because the spread between them — hours to never, within the same period — is itself the reportable fact.
The €20 figure comes from a single April 2025 report that also mentions a rate adjustment, so it is given as an approximation. Entrance arrangements for the Grottoes are quoted from one visitor and evidently change; we say so in the text rather than presenting them as instructions.
