Great tour, highly recommend! - Our tour guide Suzanna was very knowledgeable and managed the tour really well. You could tell she really enjoys what she does. We really enjoyed this tour and how much we learned about the history of such a magnificent place. Would recommend this tour as a must experience when visiting Rome.

Great tour and excellent tour guide! - Lucia was wonderful- informative and accommodating to all. She explained what we were going to do at each step and how long we had to embrace the beauty of the Vatican- skipped all the long lines! I would highly recommend this tour!

The Big Three - The ceiling of the Sistene Chapel was incredible, and sheer size of St Peter’s Basilica was amazing. Our guide was also so knowledgeable! A great tour.

You are paying to not have to queue - nothing else! - This tour is good only for the fact that it is a skip the line tour. There was so much time spent in the courtyard of the Vatican museums, possibly 2 hours out of the 3 total of the tour? The tour guide was going to great lengths talking about Michelangelo - but that was pretty much it, I didn't feel like there was much explanation into the Vatican itself or St. Peter's Basilica, only Michelangelo. To be honest we stopped listening after a while out of boredom, and I saw at least one other couple completely take out the earpiece so they would not have to listen. For the last hour, we finally get taken into the Sistine chapel which is beautiful, but waiting around for so long (for no reason) beforehand nearly ruins it. You are then brought through a corridor to give direct access to St. Peter's Basilica without having to queue. And that is where the tour guide leaves you. Why can the first part of the tour be cut, so that the tour guide can actually use that time to walk around St. Peters with the group??

Love the Sistine Chapel - We loved the sites but our guide did not point out many interesting facts that we were hearing from others around us. We had a lot of static on the headphone which weren’t the best either!!

It was worthy - We did really skip the line, but the tour was a little RUSH thru the museum. I feel that we stay outside the museum talking about the chapel more time that inside the museum.

Very expensive for a tour... - Very expensive for a tour that did not provide much context or history. Our guide rambled and did not stay on topic which made for a very long day. I went back with a free self-guided audio tour off an app the next day and got more information.

Too expensive for what you receive. - For the cost, the tour falls short. Couldn’t hear the guide well through her microphone & my earbud. Didn’t explain or describe enough of what we passed through. Didn’t go into the basilica at all, which I found strange as lots to discuss in there. The tour was maybe 2 hours, if you take away the distance from the meeting point until you are actually in the Vatican museum. Description says approximately 3 hours. There was a woman with a walker in our group and the distance from the meeting point up the Vatican museum entry point was too much for her - should have better instructions for someone in this situation. In summary, not a good value for what you pay for this tour.

Complete failure of an experience. - This was such a disappointment. I have been to the Vatican before but my husband hadn't, and it was such a bad experience I am not sure I want to book tours through Viator anymore, especially for the VERY high price I paid during peak season. The good: we did skip lines and did not have to wait like many people do. The bad: Our tour guide completely mismanaged the time we had. Whether it was slow walking outside, or standing around in the courtyard, or repeating themselves a dozen times, it was a huge waste of time and more than negated the time saved from skipping the lines. In fact it seemed that our guide was purposely stalling to show how we could skip certain lines because he was a "VIP" but it ended up backfiring and we were so rushed the entire experience was ruined. We ended up with less than one minute (no exaggeration) in the sistine chapel. In a three hour tour, I saw less than I did previously while waiting in lines. We learned almost nothing of value from the guide, and my husband did not get to take in any of the key sights he had never seen. I reached out to Viator to try to get a refund or partial refund and was denied - again, I had paid a hefty premium for this tour. I have a lot of empathy for guides and companies navigating a very hectic place, but this could not have been handled worse. Huge disappointment and will find other tour options than Viator from now on.

Be wary and do not book this tour - Really disappointed to be writing a poor review as I never normally write reviews but I feel impelled to because of the sheer cost of this tour and our resulting experience. I was really excited for the tour beforehand because it had such good reviews, with barely any negative. However in my family’s experience, it was a waste of money when you expect to be visiting the Vatican museum and sistene chapel. The tour began at 3:30 and the sistene chapel closes at exaclty 6pm. We thought that was plenty of time, however due to a ridiculous amount of time being spent looking at the sun dials in St Peter’s Square and the guide talking about the sistene chapel outside, by the time we made it into the museum we were very close to closing so our guide was shouting at us to hurry up and to cooperate with him. We were doing our best to keep up. I was truly stressed as I was having to run at times through the crowds to try and keep up. I am not exaggerating when I say there wasn’t a second spare to take a photograph or even look at an exhibit or a painting because you were on a marching mission to get to the sistene chapel before it closed. We made it in to the sistene chapel at 5:57pm. We had to again be rushed through the gate because it closes at exactly 6pm and if you are on the wrong side of it you miss going to St Peter’s bascillia because you can’t get though and have to go back the way we came. Our guide acted in a ‘I told you so’ manner when we made it out the gate and seemed like we should be grateful we made it to the bascillia. Don’t get me wrong I am glad we did as we paid for our ticket but we gained nothing from running through the museum and chapel. Very sad overall to have been in a beautiful place and spend barely any time at all, you cannot absorb the beauty of a place when you are told you are not allowed to stop to look or take a photo. I hope they improve this in the future, but be cautious of this tour if you’re wanting to actually ‘see’ these places rather than just be able to say you ticked it off because you stepped foot in it. It was overall very stressful and everyone in our group was complaining at the end.