Vatican Guided Tour — Local services in Rome

I have been taking students to the Vatican museum for nearly 20 years. We normally bring a history teacher from our school to lead a tour for our students and we normally have a wonderful experience. This year, when we purchased our tickets in the summer, due to higher numbers of tourists in Rome, the only tickets available for a large group of 60 students and 4 teachers were tickets that included a mandatory Vatican tour guide. The ticket booth assistant for groups was very polite and friendly. We divided the group in half and each group had a native Italian speaking tour guide who both had a good command of English.

The main issue was that our tour guide, an older women most likely between 65-75 years old, laid into the students only after 10 minutes into the tour. She yelled at them for not paying attention - high school students already exhausted from a week of orientation in the Rome heat and on a night tour of the Vatican starting at 8pm. I intervened and reminded the students to be on their best behavior. But that was not enough for this tour guide who continued to belittle and insult my students for the next two hours.

She was difficult to follow, did not wait for the group, did not ‘known her audience’ - perhaps she could have made the tour a little more interesting or shortened for teenagers, and she took every opportunity to remind them that they were just wasting their parents money for the tickets and tours. At a certain point, she starting becoming more passive aggressive with me, as well, essentially yelling at me for allowing the students to go ahead, blaming me for them not being attentive and demanding their ‘radios’ back, the word she used for audio guide. We got into an argument at the end of the tour because she was so outwardly rude to me demanding I find all of the students immediately to return the audio guides, even though the tour wasn’t quite finished.

Overall, this experience lead to an unnecessary stressful evening for the students and other teachers. Having paid nearly 600 euros for the tour and tickets, we will certainly rethink a future visit to the...

Okay, where to start..I attented this with my wife and 2,5 year old with a stroller.

The guided tour is not worth the cash, especially because the tour guide just rushes through all of the things. The earphone piece that you receive has a bad connection, so we ended up just going our own way at our own pace. The guide also doesn’t guide you in the Sistine chapel.

Then the museum and Sistine chapel itself. It’s just one big money machine. The whole thing goes one direction, and there are a lot of guided groups moving in a big group, blocking the way. The whole thing takes very long to walk, and your feet will hurt. WARNING: they do not have good accessibility, so be prepared to move a lot of stairs up and down. Not handy with a stroller. Also, it is way to warm during this time a year. The Sistine Chapel is one big room, with a lot of people. Difficult to just stop somewhere and look around. Few seats will...

The guided tour is exaggerated and delayed touring of the Vatican with little information. The Italian guides, especially for English visitors is the worst! We were promised it’ll be short and instant entry to Sistine chapel. When in fact it took a whole hour and 15mins for the tour to even begin and over that, the Greenline guide gave us a short course on the Sistine at the exit on a screen instead of spending that time at the actual chapel! I mean if i wanted to do that, could’ve just googled it! Pathetic scheme of minting money from tourists who genuinely want experience the Vatican. We were delayed of the experience of looking at the chapel SO much, we had to walk away from the guide mid way and just join the general line. If Vatican is a sore memory in my head, it’s because of...