Tours of the Vatican with Francesco and his team - Vatican & Sistine Chapel Tours — Local services in Rome

Paola is the best tour guide we ever had! I was reluctant to book this tour because the website does not have prices. Instead, they email you the price. That is the only negative about this experience. The price you pay for what you get is great. A private tour is the only way to visit the Vatican. The Vatican is full of group tours with people following a tour guide that has a flag like they are lemmings. How they actually hear what the guide is saying is a mystery to me.

The process to book the tour was easy. It was all done via email. You pay nothing up front. You do have to buy the passes to the Vatican Museum. Once you get those passes, you email them to Tom's tours. I booked way in advance. I got an email from Tom's tours telling me when I could order the Vatican Museum passes. They send you concise instructions on where to meet you guide. HINT: Walk around those huge lines to greet your guide at the back door of the museum. Your guide will have a sign with your last name. They will use the passes that you emailed them to get you into the museum. The only line is for security.

The best part is Paola, our tour guide. We arrived early & so did she. The first impression was very positive. She is pleasant, poised and speaks English perfectly. I currently have a mobility problem. She immediately gave us options that require less walking. Throughout the tour, she constantly made sure that I was comfortable with the pace and offered rest breaks.

I'm sure that she has already forgotten more about the Vatican than most people will ever know. Most tours are boring, this one was not. She is genuinely excited about being a part of the Vatican. She points out things of interest that you would never have noticed. It is rare for a guide to maintain the level of enthusiasm that Paola has. Whatever Tom's Tours are paying her is not enough. They have a valuable asset with Paola as a dedicated employee. She...

We booked a Vatican tour on 12/23 and a Colosseum tour on 12/24/17. Agata was our guide both days and she was absolutely fabulous! We are so glad that she was our guide for both days. Not only did she provide so much information for us, but we were able to get to know her a little and discuss Italian culture, as well. It was so interesting to see the parallels in our lives.

If you want the Vatican, Colosseum and the Roman Forums brought to life, this is the place to book your tours. We highly recommend doing the tours privately as we were able to ask questions throughout and have a more personal experience. Agata took all of the time that we needed and showed a genuine interest in our family. In addition to my husband and I, our group consisted of my 70+ year old parents, our 21 year old son and our 17 year old daughter. Agata was able to easily communicate with all of us.

Throughout the rest of our European travels, we repeatedly sang Agata’s praises. I must admit that prior to our Vatican tour none of us really had any interest in art or art history. During the planning process, when I would mention an art museum, I received a negative reaction. Much to our surprise, Agata was able to teach us so much about the artwork in the Vatican that it gave us a true appreciation. We found ourselves really enjoying the artwork throughout the other European cities that we visited. We went to the Louvre in Paris and our son, who previously had no desire to go, actually enjoyed it and was repeatedly referring back to things that Agata taught us. For that, we will forever be grateful!

I really could go on and on about our tours with Agata! Tours with Tom is definitely the company...

After spending a lot of time comparing the various private tours offered for the Vatican, I decided on Tours of the Vatican with Tom & his Team for a number of reasons, but I was mostly influenced by the fact that 97% of the reviews were 5-star, with 0% as 1 or 2-star. I am very happy to add my 5-star review to the hundreds of others for this tour. First of all, e-mail communications were EXTREMELY timely, with Selvaggia responding to my questions at all hours of the day or night, even on weekends. Secondly, the instructions on purchasing our Vatican tickets, traveling from our hotel to the Vatican Museums, and meeting our guide were perfect, including providing contact information for our guide, Francesco, in the event we ran into some delay. Of course, the best part of the experience was Francesco, who had studied history and could easily answer any question we could generate. Francesco made the tour very personal by giving us options and asking us which areas we would prefer to see. The Vatican is obviously much too large to see in a few hours, so having the opportunity to choose which options we would prefer was a huge advantage. Francesco did a great job steering us away from crowds, which is something that is a lot easier when there are only two people rather than a group of people. He did a great job by providing just the right amount of information at each stop along the way. If we had any questions, he was happy to provide as much detail as we would like. We really couldn’t be happier with this tour, and my wife and I highly...