My cousin texted me three days before flying to Rome the following: “can men wear shorts in st peter’s basilica”. Not like this is the first time we’ve discussed travel style or clothing for that matter, but usually there’s more context in our conversations than literally just shoorts’esitanbulquestionmark. Which, fair, I do write about apparel for fun money but RULES about what you can and can’t wear are historically things I actually Google rather than confidently estimate because HOWEVER church guidelines are also uniquely something everyone thinks they know about but literally no one has verified.
TLDR; Shorts are permitted, but they need to come down past your knee. Which everyone gets but then nobody accounts for when shorts rise up when you sit down.
Shorts are allowed. What is not allowed, no matter the clothing category, are legs. The decree that’s really enforced at St.
Peter’s door is the visible knee rule. Guards have been turning people away at the entrance because of this for years. What they’re looking for is if your shorts (or your skirt, this applies to all visitors) come down to your knee or lower. If they’re above your knee no matter how high end your shorts are you’re getting questioned at best and turned away at worst. It’s less a ban on shorts than a ban on bare skin, and once you reframe it that way the rule itself makes total sense but ALSO becomes significantly more annoying to account for when you’re packing.
The rule everyone gets right and nobody thinks will apply to them
Alright so here’s the breakdown. When people Google this they figure out the length requirement. Knee or lower, got it, easy, I read that on xyz travel blog and I’m not rocking jean cutoffs as my shorts. Where things go wrong is folks will buy “knee length” shorts that are perfectly knee length when you’re standing up straight with no movement at the store fitting room, get to Rome and wander around, and all of sudden you have unnecessary thighs on display that weren’t an issue before you started moving around. Clothes ride.
I know that sounds obvious but it’s not something people account for because Shorts are not going to stay strictly where they fell when you slid them onto your legs from a marketing and physics perspective. And no one warns you about it because on paper it’s not a problem with length it’s a problem with how you behave once you leave the bathroom where you’re trying said shorts on.
This is also the actual difference between a 7 inch inseam and a 9 inch inseam and I know that sounds like pedantic nonsense but there is a practical difference between shorts that SWERVE up and say “you think THESE are knee length?! Let me show you my kneecap” and shorts that only READ as knee length when you’re standing perfectly still. And I say that as someone who owns an awesome pair of 7 inch inseam chino shorts that I love for just about everything else. And would have assumed were fine for this situation. Tried them on at home, they’re like, totally knee length! I’ll be fine. Then sat down on my porch to read a book for twenty minutes and suddenly they rode up enough that I would have been questioned by security had I not double checked myself in the mirror. Not rhetorical, sat down to relax after trying them on and almost skipped a Church because of how high my pants rode in the sitting position.
The magical number you care about is not “knee length” it’s actually inseam with at least a couple inches of buffer on top of whatever you feel you need to cover your knee, because that buffer is what will account for sitting, standing, and trekking up basilica stairs. Get yourself 9 inch inseams or more. Closer to 7 and you’re trusting European posture for the entirety of your Italian vacation, which let me tell you is not how anyone wants to experience St. Peter’s.
Shorter fabrics roll and ride up easier too, which I don’t mean from a comfort perspective I mean from a Drape perspective. Something with more structure to it like a cotton twill or traditional chino material isn’t going to move as much as say a lightweight linen blend. And while everyone is Packing linen breezes for Italy in July because god damn does it breathe, it also moves more, rides up more, and overall isn’t going to behave like that perfectlystitched around your thigh demo model you saw while browsing online. Picking linen isn’t the problem, knowing that linen naturally behaves differently than a more structured cotton will should be part of your decision making if you’re rocking linen shorts for day specifically because you want to visit the basilica. Trim the inseam a few inches down to account for the fabric movement.
What will actually get you turned away vs what you think will
The other thing that not anyone mentions is that there’s no mention of short shorts being disallowed in the buildings posted dress code. It’s literally all up to the security guards at the door. Same goes for bare shoulders. Tank tops are just as likely to get you stopped at the entrance as short shorts will. People get so hung up on the short shorts question that they’ll wear shorts that PASS the knee rule no problem and then show up in a super tiny tank top and STILL get stopped. The full coverage policy is on knees and shoulders equally.
They’re not going to let you in if you violate one or the other. And it also applies to everyone, which I think gets lost in a lot of the discussions about this because most of the online content about visiting St. Peters’s Basilica dress code is worded from the perspective of women visiting and mentions the male rules as an aside.
The bottom line is to leave room for error by having shorts that are more than long enough to work, because St. Peters’s Basilica is not a place you want to be arguing about inches at the door. Not when you could be standing in front of the Pietà.
My cousin ended up not needing to buy any new shorts because he already had an appropriate pair he’d totally forgotten about. I had told him to opt for his longest shorts and that’s exactly what he did, which is honestly probably the best advice for anyone who might currently be wondering the same thing. If it’s good enough for Michelangelo’s tomb selfie it’s good enough for you too. And chances are you already have shorts that work, you just never knew you needed to consider how they looked from your seated angle anywhere other than the doctor’s office.
Jamie is in his early twenties, lives in Manchester and makes menswear content for a living. He writes about whatever’s actually trending this week, fast and a bit chaotic, and he’ll happily tell you when he got it wrong.
