Vatican Tours
 

We will be in Rome the first weekend of August. Have any of you been on a vatican tour that you would highly recommend? I found one for 60 euros that includes guide, headphones and no line. Would love to hear your recommendations.

I was really happy with our tour through Angel Tours (angeltoursrome.com). It was 25 eur per person for adults. It covered a good stretch of the vatican museums and st peter's. Our guide Katie had lots of great stories and made it all very relatable.
Also, if you haven't yet, email the scavi office and try to book the scavi necropolis tour underneath st peter's. It's unforgettable!

We already reserved the scavi tours and are very excited about it. 25 eur sounds great! Did you have to make the line or does the tour include skipping it?

Their site says they buy the tickets so you can skip the line if it is a busy day. We were there mid-week and the tour was at 1230 and we did stand in line, but for less than 10 minutes, and the tour guys talked to us about the museums during that time, so it didn't bother us a bit!
They don't do the headsets, but they keep the groups under 10 people or so, so it wasn't necessary.

Everybody has to wait in line for the security - even organized tours. The only thing they skip is the line to buy tickets, which is inside past security and relatively short.

Tours are not allowed to narrate inside the Sistine chapel, so your guide will escort you through the museums beforehand - sculpture, tapestry, etc.

60Euro seems high - the going rate with Icon tours is about 30Euro.

That's true, the main part of the line was for security. That was the 10 minute line I was talking about. We just walked right up and bought tickets, there was almost no line for that (may have been the time and day we were there?)

Our tour guide gave a good 20 minute discussion of the sistine chapel in the pine courtyard before we went into the museum, they have posters set up out there showing the ceiling panels, the Last Judgment painting, and the side panels. It's true that the guides can't narrate in the sistine chapel, and it's so packed full of people they couldn't even if they were allowed to!