Vatican and Rome timing

Was wondering on the time it takes to see the Vatican and if afternoons are okay. I am taking a cruise with one day 8 am 7 pm in Rome. After the cruise I am taking a train down on a Monday to Rome from Venice with hopefully a stop in Florence over night so we see the accademia and David the next day first thing in the morning at 815 because it is closed on Monday. I figured if we left the accademia by 930 we could take the 1038 train to Rome getting us to the Vatican after checking in about 2 pm. Will that give us enough time to see the Vatican museums and St Peters? I know they close earlier, I think 4, but if you are in the museum they let you stay till 6. One possibility is we could go to the Vatican the day of the cruise and just do pantheon and coloseum Spanish Steps that afternoon but there were about 12000 cruise passengers there that day and the port lists no cruise ships the later Tuesday so I figured the Vatican would by way less crowded. Any advice would be appreciated. We fly out the next day which is a Wednesday at 2pm from FCO.

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Yes, that can work. You might consider booking the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's basilica tours to avoid backtracking. These tours allow you to go directly from the Sistine Chapel to St. Peter's without walking the half mile back to the museums entrance/exit and then back to the basilica.

http://biglietteriamusei.vatican.va/musei/tickets/do?action=booking&codiceTipoVisita=74&step=2

The Vatican is crowded every single day. There are thousands upon thousands of tourists visiting Rome every day on land tours, either on their own or in tour groups. Cruise passengers are just a drop in the bucket at the Vatican!

It is difficult to answer your question about how long it takes. The "Vatican" includes the museum, the Sistine chapel, St. Peters basilica and the dome, if you are interested. (And that's not even taking into account the two Scavi tours and the Vatican gardens....) Doing all of those things at a reasonable pace would take the better part of a day. The area to be covered is huge -- it can take about 30 minutes just to walk without stopping from the Vatican museum entrance to the Sistine!

If, however, you are mainly interested in a more or less quick "sprint" through the basics, you could see the museum highlights + Sistine chapel in about 2 hours, plus another hour for St. Peters (without the dome).

Unless you have pre-reserved tickets, you will eat up a lot of time just standing in line for the museum. If possible, you'd want to visit the museum first, then exit out the "secret door" in the Sistine to get directly into St. Peters without another long walk back to the museum entrance, then a long walk around the outside to St. Peters, and THEN a possibly long wait to get through security at the entrance to the basilica....

On a monday that might work. The lines at st Peters are very long. If you buy tickets to the vatican museum your get in at a designated time and you can visit st Peters afterwards.

On a tuesday st Peters sometimes closes at 1 PM due to the Papal audience on wednesday