geetika

The past few days I've been reading about and looking up the multitude of Vatican tours on offer until my head was spinning and I got dizzy! I was initially leaning towards booking a tour on Vatican's website but have finally decided that its well worth the extra bucks to take a private tour. What I'm looking at is the 8AM tour by either Walks of Italy or Italy with Us, is one better than the other? Also, these are called "early bird" or private tours, but there are still going to be a whole lot of us there in the Sistine Chapel - Italy with Us has two tours at 8AM, one semi-private with max 10 people and the other group with max 25 people. Is it still going to be crowded even at that early hour, how many people can I reasonably expect to find there in June? How early should I book the tour? Thanks for your input

RonZ

Our semi private 8am tour with Italy-with-Us was terrific!

kybourbon

>>>but there are still going to be a whole lot of us there in the Sistine Chapel - Italy with Us has two tours at 8AM, one semi-private with max 10 people and the other group with max 25 people. Is it still going to be crowded even at that early hour, how many people can I reasonably expect to find there in June?<<<

The number of people in there early will be based on how many tour companies are allowed to offer that early tour. As for semi-private, isn't that really just group size? I don't think it means only 10 people will be in there unless it's one of the tours they used to allow after hours that ran about 275€ per person.

willowjane

We did the Walks with Italy tour and it was fantastic. I think we had around 15 people in our group. We had a very good guide who was so excited to share his knowledge with us. It was crowded because we did that in the afternoon. I would highly recommend the Scavi tour (the necropolis) - we all agreed it was one of the best things we did in Rome!

Goldens

We also liked Walks of Italy.

RonZ

The one we took cost €170 and had about 12 people. Whoever you pick you need to go in the AM.

geetika

Thanks, the Walks' tour does sound good. I had also contacted a guide Francesca, highly rated on trip advisor, she also proposes a similar tour, though of course at a later hour when the regular public is allowed in. We'll be just the four of us with her, would this be a better experience? willowjane, we also want to do the Scavi tour, will book that on the Vatican website. Thanks again