Italy - online ticket reservation for guided tours of the Vatican, Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, St. Peters

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The Vatican tours - an introduction

The information on this page pertains to the private Vatican tours offered by Tickitaly - tours where you have some flexibility when it comes to start times and dates. The pre-booked group tours that we offer are clearly tied to a specific date and time - click here for information on these group tours.
(We are now also able to offer individual Vatican tickets that allow you to visit without taking part in a tour - click here for details on these.)

PLEASE NOTE: Recent years have witnessed an incredible surge in bookings for the Vatican, and a less-than-perfectly-organised administration has seen some small amount of queueing necessary in peak season, even for private pre-booked tours such as ours. There is simply nothing that can be done about this, but please click here for a page explaining how to maximise your chances of avoiding such a queue. Again, this affects everyone, and if you find someone claiming to be able to bypass this, then they're being disingenuous, to put it mildly.

OPENING TIMES:

Neither of the Vatican Tours is available on a Sunday, and Tour One (taking in St. Peters) is best avoided on Wednesdays (the day of the Papal Audience). The following are holidays/days when neither tour is available:

January 1st, January 6th, February 11th, April 17th, May 1st, May 25th, June 15th, June 29th, August 15th, August 16th, November 1st, December 8th and December 25th.

You have two choices for timings, either early in the morning or post 12 noon, midday. In the past we used to recommend booking tours in the morning - not so now. Several enormous tour operators have begun to block-book the early morning tours, and are being allowed to do so; consequently, the Vatican has started to shunt forward other early morning tours, sometimes by one or two hours. They don't always do this, but if they do they'll do so with total disregard to previously booked dates. Should this occur, and should it affect one of our bookings, we will give notice, via email, at least 15-20 days before the tour date.
We are therefore now advising that you try to opt for afternoon tours, where there is less chance of timings being shifted. Note we said less chance - the Vatican does what the Vatican wants, and there can be no absolute guarantees. Please also note that we would recommend avoiding Saturday if at all possible - some level of queueing seems inevitable.
If a morning tour does not get shunted, then, from March until November, tour guides and their groups have priority entrance and are admitted between 8.00 and 8.45 AM - prior to public opening at 8.45, in other words.
Given this early start, groups need to be ready and waiting at the Vatican Museums for 7.45 AM. If your group is a small one, and they are all staying in central Rome, the tour guide can meet you at your hotel, should you prefer.

PRICING:

The prices below are per person, and are all inclusive, covering the cost of the tour guide, booking fees, entrance tickets and the 'Whisper' audio system:

Euro € 135 a head for 2 people.
Euro € 98 a head for 3 people.
Euro € 80 a head for 4 people.
Euro € 68 a head for 5 people.
Euro € 65 a head for 6 people.
Euro € 58 a head for 7 people.
Euro € 57 a head for 8 people.
More than 8 people - price on request (contact us here)

[Click here to begin the booking process for Tickitaly's Private Vatican Tours]

DRESS CODE & ACCESS:

You'll need to be wearing clothes that do not leave your shoulders/arms or lower legs bare. No shorts, short trousers, short skirts, sleeveless shirts or bare shoulders. All visitors to the Vatican Museums will be required to pass through a metal-detector prior to being granted admittance. Wheelchairs are available onsite and do not need to be reserved.

Persons with disabilities or those of very advanced years will never have to queue at any point (in fact the Vatican has won an award in this area), but they can only be accompanied by one person, others in such a group will need to queue regularly, unless a paid tour is booked for these people as well.
Wheelchairs are supplied free of charge inside the Vatican, but the tour here follows a different route, and more than 2 people may not accompany the person in the wheelchair. If a group is larger than this, they'll need to book a disabled tour and a non-disabled tour, unless they choose to take the person in the wheelchair along with them on the standard route and carry the chair themselves when necessary (stairs).

THE 'WHISPER' SYSTEM:

For groups of more than seven people it is obligatory to use the 'Whisper' audio system. Your guide will be talking into a small microphone and you'll each be listening on special earpieces. This is included in the price. If you or your group are still looking for a hotel in Rome, please allow us to recommend ahotelinitaly.com.

YOUR TOUR GUIDE:

More often than not, your guide will be Federica, an officially licensed Rome Tour Guide. Federica, a native roman, graduated in Art History, with an M.A in conservation and restoration of works of art. She is 35 and has been working as a tour guide in Rome for 6 years.

Federica is the author of 'Rome, Then And Now' - Amazon link