Who offers the highest-quality tours of The Vatican/Rome?

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For Catholics who are visiting for the first time, what is the best excursion to book? This would be for Catholics, Roman history students, Latin language devotees? Thank you very much.
 
We signed up for a tour of the Colosseum for one day and a tour of the Vatican the next say. Everything went fine for the Colosseum tour. The bus never showed up for the Vatican tour. We called and complained and we met the tour guide at a pizza place across the street from the vatican… Because they didnt have any more busses available, we wound up getting a private tour guide. We could ask any questions we wanted as we toured and saw the paintings and such.
I would think the highest quality tour would be a private tour and not with 20 other people.
 
Honestly, I’d reach out to the North American College and try to get a seminarian there as a tour guide. They are the ones who know the coolest places from a Catholic vantage point.
 
The Vatican Museum has an awful lot of ART. Our tour guide was a Polish woman fluent in several languages who was an art expert. A seminarian may not know much about Michaelangelo and raphael and Dali.
 
The vatican is a museum with some but not all art of religious themes. You pay to tour the museum entering St peter’s is free. Inside the basilica, they can provide a few interesting tidbits such as “this Pope authorized this” or “That Pope commissioned that” but you’re most left free to roan about the basilica. Inside the museum, you need an art expert though as it IS an art museum. It is a very special and unique museum but it is an art museum.
I should mention that all kinds of people not just catholics can enjoy the museum and its treasures.
 
Many many many “tour guides” are simply scammers who want your money they promise things that do not exist or that are free anyway.

If you want the Scavi tour, book it early via the Vatican website http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/i...uffscavi_doc_gen-information_20090216_en.html

Buy a guidebook from a professional (Rick Steves comes to mind) and ignore the hucksters.

Inside the Vatican you can rent those headphone guide thingies.

Agree that to ask the North American College for a seminarian.
 
We used the Rick steves tour book also.
LEGITIMATE tour guides have to register at the front desk when they arrive with a party. Most speak multiple languages and I think most people arrange their tours online long before they leave for Italy. You can check out the tour company onlne as well . I can’t imagine just showing up and trying to round one up at the last minute that speaks your language.
 
Netflix has a series called “Scam City” (it may be available to stream elsewhere). It helps travelers see the many online and IRL scams that happen. The very first episode is about the tour guide scammers in Rome.
 
And make sure you only get in cabs that have the City of Rome sticker on the side with the rates posted. When I went, the first guy I encountered leaving the airport was all set to take me into the city in his minivan for 80 Euro. No thanks! The City of Rome actually set a standard of what taxis can charge for the trip from the airport to anywhere in the city limits. And it’s much more reasonable than that. I think it was somewhere between 10 and 20 Euros.
 
We stayed in Rome at a very little B&B that was on a very tiny side street. The cab drivers didn;t know where it was and their GPS could not help them. Finding it was not easy. When we first got there, we wound up telling the cab driver to just drop us off at the Spanish steps and we’d walk the 6 blocks or so as we were tired of driving around in circles and we knew how to get back from the Steps. They didnt overcharge us though.
 
That’s really out of the way if even the cab drivers didn’t know where it was. 🙂

The legitimate cabs are pretty reasonable. I did have some drivers who gave me my receipt hand written on business cards for strip clubs. 😲 They didn’t do that when I was travelling with a nun who was part of my group, but only when I was by myself. 😞 I had to turn in those receipts at the office, too. 😳
 
I was travelling with my wife so I didnt get any strip club receipts.

The first few days of our trip were in Rome and i didnt feel comfortable driving in Rome or finding nearby parking so we picked up our car rental as we were leaving Rome on our way to Florence. We cabbed it around Rome. and we had a lot more problems with the dishonest car rental company than we did with any of the cabs.
 
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