This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The Vatican Museums trace their founding to 1506, when Pope Julius II acquired the classical sculpture Laocoon and His Sons and put it on public display in the Vatican, traditionally counted as the founding acquisition of what would grow into one of the world's largest museum complexes. The collection came to include the Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo's ceiling and Last Judgment frescoes, the Raphael Rooms, and the Vatican Library's manuscript holdings, assembled by successive popes over five centuries rather than completed in any single reign, so that no single pontificate can claim to have finished what Julius II began.
The Museums remain a working part of the Holy See rather than a secular civic institution, administered directly by the Vatican and placed under papal rather than Italian state or municipal authority. Barbara Jatta has directed the complex since January 2017, the first woman to hold the office, overseeing a collection that now draws millions of visitors a year while remaining, in law and in daily practice, an arm of the Church rather than a state cultural agency. The Sistine Chapel itself continues to serve its original liturgical function as the site where papal conclaves are held, a use that predates its status as a museum destination by centuries.