Guided Tour In Rome Including Vatican Museums Entry

My rating is not high for this tour for several reasons, but primarily because the title is a misrepresentation. This tour experience is not a full-day guided tour, but 3 tours with 3 different tour guides throughout the day with 3 separate tour companies. We did not notice when we booked that this tour doesn’t provide transportation from location to location, which admittedly was our fault. So please be aware, you must make your way from the Colosseum to the Vatican museums on your own (20min taxi drive, which you have to pay for), and then make your way back to the Spanish Steps after that (25min taxi ride again). The tour is advertised as a 6 and a half hour day, but our experience with walking to the meeting location by 10:00am, then traveling between the Colosseum to the Vatican museums and back, then taking the tour from the Spanish Steps ended up being like 11 and a half hours out and about in Rome. We didn’t get back to our hotel until almost 9pm and didn’t eat dinner until about 9:30pm. We were exhausted by the end! With that baseline set, I will get to the specifics of the 3 tours. You are instructed to meet at the tour coordinator’s office 30min before the tour start time and then you check in with the tour coordinator. This is where we discovered that the tour was not one company and one guide all day. We were given a voucher for the Vatican museums with the meet up details for the Vatican museums/Sistine Chapel tour on the front and the Pantheon, Navona Piazza, etc. tour details written on the back. You should take a picture of the meeting details for the Spanish Steps portion, because the voucher is taken by the Vatican tour company when you check in. Mention of having two other places to meet is not in the tour description anywhere, nor is there any mention that these are separate tour companies and the guide will change at every location. The first tour, which leaves from the advertised meeting place, covers the Colosseum and the Forum. We walked from the original meeting place to the Colosseum. The tour guide, Giuseppe, was decent in terms of information, however, he talked and moved very quickly. He held his hand up barely above his shoulder as a signal of where he was, but the Forum and Colosseum were very crowded and it was very difficult to follow him through the crowd, especially with how fast he moved. He wasn’t aware of how many people were in our group and nearly left people behind several times when they didn’t move fast enough. He should have had a flag or marker to follow like other tour guides, or at the very least, a branded or flashy shirt to make it easier to follow him. The first tour ended about quarter to 1pm, and we were left to explore the Colosseum on our own. After that we had until 3pm to eat our own lunch and make our way to the Vatican museum meeting place, which is the office of another tour company. We were grouped together and went up to the museum, where we met the second tour guide, a woman whose name I don’t think we ever got. She was nice, soft spoken, and carried a noticeable marker on a pole that made her easy to follow through the crowd and find if you got lost. The tour with her went well and we enjoyed our time at the Vatican museum. A note here: the tour description and anywhere you look online says that you must cover your shoulders and knees to get into the Sistine Chapel, but I didn’t see this enforced anywhere; there were people (men) with knees showing in the Chapel. After we were left to explore the Basilica on our own, we had to catch a cab to the Spanish Steps for what we were told was a 6pm meeting time. No one was there when we arrived. After waiting a bit, I contacted the tour coordinator through the Viator app, and they responded by giving me the tour guide’s number to contact. It was a little annoying that they made me contact the guide on my own—especially annoying when I called the guide and found out the tour had left without us because we had been late! The tour coordinator told us to meet at 6pm, but apparently we were supposed to be at the meeting place at 5:50pm! Luckily, the tour had only moved to the Virgin Mary statue to the left of the steps, so we caught up and finished the tour. We loved the tour guide, Matteo. He was funny, engaging, and knowledgeable. However, this last tour was not as advertised. The tour description says that we will start in Piazza Navona, then go to the Pantheon, then end at Trevi Fountain. It also says that the tour includes entry to the Pantheon. The Pantheon closes at 6:30pm, so there was no way we were going inside the Pantheon with a tour start time of 6pm, and unsurprisingly and disappointingly, we never went inside. So this tour does not include entry to the Pantheon. Matteo started at the Spanish Steps, made a few fun stops along the walk, then went to the Trevi Fountain, then arrived at the Pantheon at about 7:45pm. We ended at Piazza Navona at about 9pm. Matteo wasn’t carrying a flag like we were originally told by the tour company, and he did not know who was in our group. I am 90% sure we left someone behind at the Trevi Fountain. To conclude, the individual tours we took ranged from okay to enjoyable, but the whole day was chaotic and exhausting jumping from place to place. You do not travel with the same tour guide or tour group the whole day, you have to walk or taxi everywhere, and you do not get access to the Pantheon.

We had a wonderful time in Rome with our tour guide. We visited the best sites and he described everything. The timing was perfect since we spend enough time to enjoy the time in every important place. We enjoy every tourist site without waiting in the line. He adapted to our language even though we hired him to translate in English. The tour guide was patient, knowledgeable, respectful of our culture. Also, friendly.