What a the advantages / disadvantages of seeing the Vatican on your own or going with a tour group ? I was talking to someone who visited the vatican a few months ago, and he mentioned that alot of the tour groups rush you through and give you 5 minutes for photo's and thats it! He visited the Vatican casually at his own pace!
any thoughts appreciated

Well it depends on what you mean by Vatican - if just the Museum then all tour groups are going to rush you through.

I took a great Icon tour of the Vatican. It ended up being almost 5 hours and included the museum and St Peter´s and it was still rushed. But that was OK for me as I am not a art person and just wanted the highlights.

Vatican City and St Peter´s are of course free so you can go back after the tour and spend as much time as you like.

If you really love art you may wish to do a whole bunch of research in advance and spend a full day in the musuem. If you are just the casual tourist do a tour but book a decent tour company - there are a whole bunch recommended on this board!

Thanks wilees, I'm checking out icontours website at the moment. As a general Idea, may I ask how long you approximately, would you have spent in the sistine chapel?

My tour guide gave us 10 minutes after he had given us a bit of whispered guidance. This was plenty for me. We had only 9 in the group so if anyone wanted to spend a few more minutes he would have been OK. But IMHO St Peter´s is by far more important that the Sistene chapel which was packed with tourists (mainly groups).

Thanks again wilees

I just had a look at icontours website, and it mentions the divine inspirations tour is 2.5 hrs. Would you know if this is the tour you carried out, or is there another tour lasting 5 hours?

Yes that is it. It is only meant to be 2.5 hours but we got to 4.45 hours. I really do not think that they could get through it all in 2.5hrs but I guess that is all they promise!!

I did the Ancient Rome one as well and that only had 7 people on it and took 3.5 hours.

Thanks again wilees, will keep that in mind. may even ask the question at time of booking!