Vatican Museum And Sistine Chapel Guided Tour

We had a wonderful tour of all things Vatican on 9/20/24. Stephanie was our tour guide and she couldn’t have been any better. Very knowledgeable about all aspects and eager to answer any questions. She kept us going to cover it all in 3 covers but we never felt rushed. Would highly recommend this tour.

Honestly this was not the best tour. I signed up for the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's Basilica Guided Tour. The tour guide was hard to follow both literally and figuratively, and everything felt very rushed. The communication devices were spotty if the guide got too far ahead of us, which happened frequently as we were rushing to catch up. Despite the tour description saying that it was a 3 hour tour, our guide only was with us a little over 2 hours and left after the Sistine Chapel instead of giving any tour of the Basilica. I was expecting a bit more.

Our experience was pure chaos. We actually booked a Big Bus tour subcontracted with them of Vatican City in February for our July trip because it was the most important tour we wanted to do right. We got conflicting information on the start time of the tour and could not verify even though the Big Bus app. So we went to a stop and the Big Bus attendant was overwhelmed with full buses and hoards of waiting customers. He could not answer our question either and finally put us on a bus to go to the Vatican Stop. They told us where the tour subcontractor, City Rome Tours, was so we went and verified our start time. When we showed up at the City Rime Tour office for our 4:30 pm, they told us it was overbooked and cancelled our tour on the spot! They gave us passes to the Vatican city and told us to rent our own audio tours. Due to the late start time, we literally ran to the Sistine Chapel and then tried to run to St. Peters Basilica to get there before 7pm. But at 6:30 pm they had stopped receiving guests. So we didn’t get to see it or the Vatican museums!!! It was awful, stressful, and overwhelming. Raveel Ur Rehman, the manager of the City Rome Tours, said that he would issue a reimbursement when he gave us the substitute passes. We have sent two emails over the last two weeks, called, and WhatsApp with no response! What was meant to be the highlight of our trip has become a dark cloud. Never again!

I purchased tickets thru Trip Advisor to tour the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica with City Rome Tours. The tickets were for "skip the line" entrances. We arrived at the City Rome Tours office at 8:20 AM as our tour was to begin at 8:30 AM. We did not leave with our guide, Matthew, from outside of the Tour Company's office, until after 8:35. When we arrived at the entrance, one of our group had been given a "used/expired" ticket and the entire group was made to wait for 25 minutes while 2 agents had to come up from the tour office to attempt to rectify the situation. We did not obtain entrance to the Museum until 9:15, making the crowds significantly more than had we entered when we were supposed to. Once inside, after receiving our audio listening devices, our guide informed us that it was "too bad" we had lost 45 minutes to spend in the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel and we would have to make up time. While our guide seemed very knowledgable and pleasant, he proceeded to lead us on a near sprint thru the very crowded Museum, sometimes so far ahead that the audio device lost what he was saying. The problems with the delayed entry were compounded by penalizing us for further and speeding thru the very crowded Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. We were deposited at the entrance of St. Peter's Basilica to explore this site on our own. We did really enjoy St. Peter's Basilica and toured this site with our self Guided (FREE) Rick Steves Audio that we downloaded to our phones. Wish we had been able to do that with both the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. Read the various offerings for these sites on Trip Advisor carefully and do not book thru City Rome Tours. This horrible experience was entirely due to failings of the company and the guide. We were never offered any form of compensation for the problems.

I felt the 2 hour long tour worth this much money was too fast. Also considering so many people and lines everywhere. A Note about covered shoulders and knees for the trip while visit certain location would be much appreciated.