Castel Sant'Angelo tickets

The official ticket

Castel Sant'Angelo is an Italian state museum, so the national rules apply. Full price is €18. EU citizens from 18 up to their 25th birthday pay €2. Under-18s of any nationality go free, as do the legal free categories: disabled visitors with a companion, Italian school teachers with the right form, EU tour guides at work, ICOM members and a few others.

Booking isn't mandatory, but the museum recommends it every day and especially on weekends and holidays. You buy through the Musei Italiani portal, which hands you over to the concession holder's online box office, or by phone (Monday to Friday 9:00–18:00, Saturday 9:00–14:00). Dates are released a few months at a time, so if your date isn't bookable yet, check again later.

Tickets are issued in each visitor's name, and at the entrance you show the ticket plus an original ID. If the details don't match you won't get in and won't get a refund. Names can be changed once, until midnight the day before.

A bonus most visitors miss: the castle ticket also gets you into two small house museums, the Boncompagni Ludovisi and the Hendrik Christian Andersen, free on the day and for the next two days.

The Passetto di Borgo

The Passetto is the elevated walkway linking the castle to the Vatican, used by popes as an escape route. It's not part of the standard visit. You can only walk it on guided or accompanied tours run by archaeologists and art historians, booked on Musei Italiani.

There are three official options:

• Daytime, Friday to Sunday 9:00–13:00, castle entry included.
• Saturday evening, 19:00–23:00, the Passetto plus a walk on the castle ramparts after closing time.
• Step-free tours on the second and fourth Sunday of the month, for visitors who can't or prefer not to use stairs, without the castle.

The Passetto is closed on the first Sunday of the month. Tiqets and Headout sell tickets and tours that include it; they cost more but can help when official dates are gone or you want everything in one booking.

What resellers add

For plain entry, the official ticket is the cheapest. Resellers make sense if you want an audio guide (the building has been Hadrian's tomb, a papal fortress and a prison, and many rooms mean little without context), a guided tour, or a bundle such as entry plus a hop-on hop-off Tiber boat. GetYourGuide and Tiqets have app-based audio guide versions that cost less than guided tours.

Free days, Mondays and practical tips

On the first Sunday of the month entry is free and you can't book: everyone, groups included, queues at the desk for an unnamed free ticket, and the route may change with the crowds. If you want a calm visit, pick another day.

The castle is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00–19:30, last entry 18:30, and closed on Mondays, 25 December and 1 January. Until 7 December 2026 there's an exception: "Castle Mondays", the first Monday of the month, 14:00–20:00 (last entry 19:00), with a special €5 ticket sold only at the desk. No groups.

During renovation works the ticket office is in temporary structures outside the castle, and the ground-floor route may be diverted. There's no cloakroom and no animals are allowed, so travel light. Access for visitors with disabilities is limited to part of the outdoor areas; the museum offers virtual tours of the harder-to-reach spaces.

The castle sits on the Tiber, about ten minutes' walk from St Peter's along Via della Conciliazione, which makes it easy to pair with a Vatican morning. Lepanto and Ottaviano on Metro A are each around a fifteen-minute walk. For the view from the terrace, late afternoon is good, as long as you're in before last entry at 18:30.