Maybe you come because to you this is a holy place. Maybe it’s art itself that is sacred to you. In either case, you feel the grandeur of these museums as you advance from room to room and from collection to collection, in the solitude of an after-hours tour.

There’s no one but you and your guide.

Your footsteps are the only ones to resound in the vast marble interiors. And when you stop, there is utter silence. You contemplate Giotto’s Stefaneschi Triptych, the perfect body of a Roman statue, Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel — jewels collected over the centuries by many popes.

You will wander at your leisure and, unhindered, undisturbed, will immerse yourself in millennia of art.