During our trip to Italy in May, we will be visiting Rome, Florence, Venice, and Bellagio. I know this question may seem a bit vague, but which museums/attractions in Rome, Florence, or Venice would you recommend we have a guide rather than visit on our own? I know it would be easier to answer if I gave you a list of sites, but I don't have one yet. I am really just looking for your experiences where you went and were really happy you had a guide or wished you had had one.

We are already planning on a guide for the Vatican museums and we plan to do the Secret Tour of Doges Palace in Venice.

Any other major sites that would best be viewed with a tour guide?

Thank you!

I think perhaps you haven't received any answers yet, because most people here on Fodor's are self-planners and don't use guided tours?

Are you asking about specific tours (say like the Vatican) for a single place only? Or someone to plan your whole trip?

We practically never use guides and rarely miss them. MOst group torus are least common denominator and tell you no more than, if as much as, you get out of a good guide book (one focused on the sights - not a general guide).

We have done a couple of walking tours with small groups, when we were sure the guide knew their stuff that we enjoyed. And we overheard one excellent tour in San Clemente in Rome. The guide was truly erudite, informative and interesting - but I think that was a big $ private tour.

If you're willing to do the learning yourself - or have some background - you can easily do things yourself.

One example. We took a tour of the Vatican Gardens/Grounds with the mandatory guide and at one point came upon an obviously very old building in which a society wedding was taking place. I walked closer, looked at the label and asked the guide. He said - oh, it;s just an old chapel. In fact, it was the chapel in which, in 800, Charlemagne outwitted the pope by grabbing the crown out of the pope's hands and crowning himself Holy Roman Emperor. In that way he got the title, but wasn't forced to swear fealty to the Pope for his territory. This was a major moment in European history - and the chapel was from the 5th century. The guide either didn;t know or didn't care.

The only guided tours I've taken in those three cities were for the Vatican Museums, St. Peter's, and the Borghese Gallery. I really enjoyed the tour at the Borghese (did it twice).

Definitely individual places, I don't think I could handle being on one of those week-long tour trips. I like the planning part too much!!

I will look into the tour at the Borghese Gallery.

Thanks!!

Context tours in Rome come highly praised. I'd especially recommend a tour of the Forum, because it's hard to imagine the original from the assortment of broken columns and pieces of marble that you see there.

You don't need a guide for Bellagio or Venice. In Florence it might be nice if you're very into Renaissance art and architecture.

We used a tour guide of the Vatican simply so we could skip the huge line! We hadn't planned to though. We got there 'early' (and we were there in March), but the line was already a couple hours long. A tour group actually found us and asked if we wanted to join. We were skeptical at first, but it was only a tiny bit more in cost than if we'd paid individually, we got in the group entrance right away, we had a guided tour with headphones if we wanted or we could drop out whenever we wanted. It ended up working out very well for us. It was worth it just to skip the line.


I really liked that they used headphones where the tour guide is tuned in to your group and you don't have to try to stand as close as possible to the guide to hear. That means you can listen, but still explore the room on your own and look at other things. Our 5 year old ended up loving it the most and was very interested in all the paintings.

I know I'm not really answering your question but a possible alternative to a guided tour is to do what we did last time and download podcasts to ipods before leaving home. We thoroughly enjoyed them (even though they were the very corny Rick Steves)! As an example we used them in the Forum in Rome and it was terrific, the podcast started at one end and took us right to the other end of the Forum - fabulous! We could go at our own pace and just pause the podcast when we wanted to. I agree with the other poster who commented that otherwise you will just wander aimlessly through the Forum without really understanding what you are seeing.

I do like the idea of a tour guide with head phones!

The Uffizi in Florence might be worth a guided tour, I must admit to eavesdropping on a few other tour groups while we were there.

I hope you have a fabulous time!

In Rome we used www.enjoyrome.com for tours of the Vatican and the Forum. They were great.