Best Vatican Guided Tour Company?

[UTVOLS]

Our trip to Rome is very last minute, so we have not had much time to study...:o I feel as if I'm cramming for a final exam and I haven't sat in the class for one day. :confused:

 

Thus, we would prefer to take a 'guided' tour of the Vatican and other 'sites'...

We would love to take recommendations....pleeeaaaaseeee...

[drsb]

We are using Angel tours at a very reasonable price. http://www.angeltoursrome.com

[JoeyJoJoShabadu]

http://www.italywithus.biz/main_pages/tours.php

 

Expesnive as all hell... but we just booked this. I can't wait.

[texancruzer]

We bit a big bullet and did a PRIVATE TOUR with Angel Tours last Nov.

 

We had Eileen for the W-H-O-L-E day. Just dh and myself.

 

We did the Vatican museums/Sistine Chapel/St. Peters in the morning.

 

Then a quick bite of pizza.... quick taxi ride over to the Coliseum then toured the Coliseum/Forum/Palantine Hill in the afternoon.

 

90 euros per person per tour = 360 euros for the day. Plus our entry fees and lunch (we treated Eileen) plus taxi fare.

 

Can't tell you how much we enjoyed our day and recommend them highly.

 

She knew so much - art history masters degree. She must have answered a gazillion questions I had. Ask for her !!!

 

www.angeltoursrome.com PS They give free tours of the Pantheon at night.

[UTVOLS]

We are using Angel tours at a very reasonable price. www.angeltoursrome.com

 

http://www.italywithus.biz/main_pages/tours.php

 

Expesnive as all hell... but we just booked this. I can't wait.

 

We bit a big bullet and did a PRIVATE TOUR with Angel Tours last Nov.

 

 

So far, that's 2 votes for being with an Angel,:) ...and one vote for 'expensive as hell'.....:eek:

 

Travelocity partners with MyColluseumTour (49e includes ticket) and MyVaticanTour (53e includes ticket), and we were impressed with their website, but don't know anything about them other than looking at their site...:confused: Anyone heard of them?

 

Definitely interested in what my fellow CC members prefer....

[JoeyJoJoShabadu]

So far, that's 2 votes for being with an Angel,:) ...and one vote for 'expensive as hell'.....:eek:

 

 

Before you dismiss it... google images of the sistine chapel and understand it is literally wall to wall people... expensive as it is... you are virtually alone in there at night.

[Belisarius]

Based on Rick Steves' recommendations and postings on the CruiseCritic boards, I have placed a HUGE bet on Context Tours (http://www.context.com), booking with them multiple times in Rome, Paris and Pompeii. They look like they both a) use scholars like art historians and archaeologists and b) have a lot of tours geared at families/kids. We get on the plane to Rome in exactly 28 days (and counting! :D ), so I won't know if my bet pays off until then.

[courtice8]

i just got back from rome and visited the vatican. we had ryan from presto tours. he is incredible!

[crusingLucy]

In early May, we had a wonderful tour of the Vatican and St. Peters with Jimmy of Angel Tours. The tour of the Vatican museums and Cistine Chapel took place in the morning, followed by a break for lunch and the tour of St. Peter's. I felt it was well worth the Euro 50 per person.

[cruisingmimi]

I will cast my vote for Angeltours.com also. We have used them twice. We booked them this past December and they picked us up at Civitavecchi in a nice van (there were 6 of us) and took us to St. Peter's Basilica for a tour, then all around Rome, then our last stop at Trevi Fountain. It was nighttime by the time we stopped at Trevi Fountain and it was such a beautiful sight all lit up.

 

I booked the Angels a couple of years ago for a tour of the Vatican for 15 of us. We toured the Vatican, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. You can see St. Peter's so many times and will still be awed by it's beauty and size.

 

Check out their website for email info. You can book them for just a tour of the Vatican (Sistine & St. Peter's) and it is very inexpensive. The tour lasts approximately 3 hrs. The thing that we liked is that you will be in a small group of no more than 10 people so you will get so much more out of their tour. I highly recommend them.

Mary

[NCMtnBoys]

This might be a little too spontaneous for you to rely on, but last time I was at the Vatican I had planned to do the self-guided tour in Rick Steves' tourbook. With tourbook in hand as I'm standing there and reading through the information out of the corner of my eye I see someone approaching me. I stop my reading mid-sentence and look up to see what they may want. It was a student and he asked me if I would be interested in a free english-speaking tour of the Vatican. I hesitated for a moment (cuz what's really free anymore?) but then said "sure". He asked me to follow him to a group of people who had just started a tour with their guide.

 

The tour ended up being informational and yes, it was free. I don't remember any other information about who the group of students were (this was more than 3 years ago), but I seem to remember that at the end of the tour they handed out literature for additional tours they would conduct for you, for a fee, around Rome. I guess they offered the free tour to be able to get to people to try and sell them another tour later.

 

It was a nice surprise and we were glad we did it.

[Mike073]

We used driverinrome.com (Daniele) for three days and one night tour of the buildings lit up. They were excellent also and set up our museum tour, colisseum and forum tour, night tour and provided transfers for our Papal audience.

 

A little bit about what we did extra - we booked the Vatican SCAVI tour to look around under the Bascilica and were able to gaze on the bones of St. Peter. Absolutely chilling for all of us. You have to google for information which you must do yourself - organized tours cannot do it for you. Up in the Bascilica, when you go through the crypt to view the graves of various popes including John Paul II, you see the tomb of St Peter that was installed over the years. The lighted candle is about 12 inches from the bone repository on the other side of the marble. The SCAVI tour goes behind and below what you see there.

 

The Vatican Museums are wall to wall and we shuffled along for three hours. The private night tours are somewhere in the 300 -350 euro range and leave every thirty minutes, so you really are not alone in there, but it would have been a much more civilized experience.