St. Peter’s Basilica & Optional: Vatican Museums Or Breakfast

Well organized! Check in was easy. Easy meet up point. Good communication.

A little hard to find the ticketing redemption point. However, buying this is well worth it. You save yourself hours of waiting in line to get into St Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel.

A booking discrepancy between systems is bad enough. But here's where it got worse: instead of honoring the date we had booked and updated through Viator, they refused to take us on the tour. They offered a cancellation and full refund to resolve the issue—which seemed reasonable. We accepted, trusting them to follow through. They never processed the refund. When we followed up, they simply denied our refund request. We paid good money and lost an irreplaceable experience with our family. The operator blamed the platform, the platform likely blamed the operator, and we were caught in the middle with empty pockets and a ruined day. This is inexcusable customer service. If this review saves even one family from this experience, it's worth posting. Book elsewhere.

There was a huge mix up. They blamed everything on Viator that we should’ve booked thru them and this wouldn’t happen. Not only did we miss out but I don’t get my points I was banking on.

The Basilica is amazing. The audio guide is sufficient, and you do beat those without prepurchased tickets. However, if u have the additional funds I would recommend taking a guided tour. The lines here we're still long and standing in the sun was. O fun. Also, avoid Wednesdays as there is some type of Papal activity that day that adds to the crowds.

Valeria Laura & martina were fantastic, very welcoming and explained everything to us clearly. Great service

The staff were very accommodating with the times as we arrived early but beyond that we were really on our own. I think it was overpriced and the audio guides were far from ideal. Also we were practically told what to write in our review by a very pushy staff member. I didn’t send it at the time and am writing this review instead. It was inappropriate and coercive. Not ok.

Francesca and Valeria were very helpful on our trip and made sure we had a great experience!

Perfect. No strict timeline to follow. A lot of people had told us not to go to the Vatican museum. That it was very long. So I canceled that tour and booked this one instead. We had found other excursions too much so this was great to go at our own pace a just do St Peter’s

Absolute joke. I bought an entry ticket and I been told I can not enter because it was purchased not through official website.

Guide was helpful and provided all information required

Everything was just as I have come to expect from Viator. The staff were very friendly and helpful, especially with other questions that we had about trying to arrange another tour.

We had a great experience thanks to Rafaella! She was extremely helpful in getting us our tickets and took the time to explain and guide us on where to go and what to see. She was very kind, friendly, and made everything much easier for us. Thank you, Rafaella, for your help and great service! Highly recommended.

I had an excellent experience exploring the Vatican museums and St Peter’s Basilica. Read through all of the instructions before arriving to the meeting point. If you are going during the summer months, there will be a lot of crowds.

Pretty simple. Meet near by, get your tickets, go in. Would have been a lot easier if the just emailed them to me.

We were unable to enter until we went to the vendor to pick up the tickets. They are not emailed to you. We were then redirected twice because the vendor had moved. We lost almost two hours attempting to track down the tickets. Also, the optional part means to go to the ticket booth on site, waiting in line, and purchase the optional parts.

direction s to validate different in email from ticket both were wrong. I spent 45 minutes trying to find the correct place to validate.

Great to see the Basílica but we were under the impression for the cost of the tour that we would have a guide, the email sent us to the wrong ticket point. The Basílica is free so basically you got to jump the queue a bit, we did have a ticket to the dome which is great to see but expensive to see it with this tour

The “skip the line” promotion is misleading because you still have to queue for the security check, along with hundreds of other visitors. Since the security queue is unavoidable, paying extra for the “skip the line” option feels useless—you are essentially paying more for little to no benefit. I also purchased the ticket online because I wanted to avoid inconvenience. However, after completing the payment, I was informed that I would only receive a voucher and still needed to find their representative to redeem it for the actual ticket. The map they provided showed the wrong location, and I had a very difficult time finding their representative. When I finally found them, I was only given the ticket for St. Peter’s Basilica. For the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums, I was told to go to another location to redeem the tickets. Instead of making the experience more convenient, the whole process made me tired, frustrated, and stressed. The ticketing and redemption process needs significant improvement, and the “skip the line” promotion should be explained more accurately so customers know exactly what they are paying for.

excellent service from the stuff ! everyone was very kind and helpful

Very friendly staff Francesca

This was such a SCAM. They give you a voucher to meet up with them and collect your tickets. We arrived early and were given only half of the tickets we paid for and not for the time that we booked. Staff was rude and dismissive. We had a booking for 12:30 and they gave us tickets for 4:45pm which was after our transportation back to port was leaving. We paid a ton of money and didn’t even get to go to the Vatican. They basically said too bad. DO NOT BUY ANY TICKETS FROM THIS BUSINESS.

Without any warning they cancelled the tour at the very last minute . And they didn’t try to accommodate at any option then you just lose your opportunity

It was a total scam. It was booked under sistene chapel tour...only 2 spots left! It was to st peters...which is free...also charged for audio guide which did not work.

Easy entry after finding the meeting point. Loved the audio guide. Amazing place to visit!

Did not need to pay to skip the line, this event was free. I should have gotten reimbursed. The event itself was beautiful.

Martina Patrizia has excellent customer service. She speaks English and Italian fluently besides other languages. She was such an amazing to us. We highly recommend her!

Make sure you bring a phone and headphones for each person, including kids. Our kids do not have phones and this limited our experience dramatically.

Love the lady that did the walking tour but the coordination about hour the difference tours was terrible. One at 8:30 and other at 2:30!! Crazy

Aurora very good Service Hannas

The entrance is free, there is not point of booking here, we had to queue as everyone who didn't have any ticket, though the ticket was not valid for anything, so don't waste your money this is a scam

Be prepared to wait in line for tickets. Make sure phone has plenty of battery. The crowds at the Vatican may have been why we couldn’t get a connection to auditour. The pictures were beautiful and the initial guide was knowledgeable. But we had trouble and didn’t find a Viator person at the Vatican to help.

Staff were uniformly, pleasant and helpful, but the system itself is astonishingly inefficient and painful.

Our tour included Audio guide in St Peters Basilica and self tour of the museums. I wish we had done the tour with a guide as we would have got lot more information walking through the buildings.. The tickets were fantastic and we were able to skip lines despite large crowds.

Very good information and service, also frindly staff

Very good. Staff at ticket collection friendly and helpful. Entry a bit of a free for all, but we were warned it would be a scrum after mass. Basilica spectacular, would recommend the crypt. Really enjoyed visit.

We were able to avoid the extremely long lines at the Basilica and at the Vatican. Our guide told us things that we never knew and made sure that we saw the most important things as it is rather overwhelming but so beautiful!

I give this bad review because I could not get in with the confirmation code. I was told at the gate that I had to have a ticket, that I was unable to download. I was told I had to call the number provided, and I did not have a phone that worked in Italy. I was not told any of this in advance. I tried calling it on WhatsApp, but the number provided was not on WhatsApp so I ended up being denied entry. I was able to enter on a last minute ticket purchased at an office, and the Basilica was beautiful. Highly recommend, and I would give the Basilica more than 5 stars if I could. Due to how amazing the Basilica was despite this ticket not getting me entry, I am leaving 2 stars.

It would be much easier if the agent just sent us tickets to the venue. It adds a level of difficulty to physically locate the agent in order to receive the tickets for admission. Although it says skip the line we had to wait in a fairly long line. Granted the people without tickets had an intolerable wait. Without Wi-Fi we were unable to download the audio app so most of the time were in the dark as to what we were experiencing. The agent should provide Wi-Fi and assist with downloading the app. All that aside, the Basilica and Museum are must sees when in Rome.

I booked an online reservation with Biagio Tour Guide for the Vatican Basilica, Museums, and Sistine Chapel and paid over €100, which felt overpriced for the experience. The process was poorly structured. First, we had to collect the tickets at a kiosk, then queue—despite having a 10:30 AM reservation. In reality, the reservation made no difference, as we still waited around two and a half hours. The tickets were sold as “skip-the-line,” which is misleading given the actual waiting time. On top of that, we had to return to the office again to collect additional tickets. For this price, the entire process should be fully digital and clearly communicated. At the very least, expectations around waiting times should be transparent. Overall, I would recommend booking directly via the official page.

The only complaint is the luck of information the beginning where and how to get the Boucher. Too much protocol., especially in that kind of crowd at the Vatican, which is overwhelmed. Especially if you go with a disabled person and no language, Not sympathy or help. If we buy online the entrance tickets should be automatically online too, so we don’t have to go around and around with any clue where to go.

Entrance is free and the line to go in free was faster than the line that I paid for. They say you will get a guide and you are left on your own.

There is a lot of walking involved during the tour. We did the tour for about 4 hours and it was exhausting. Highly recommend doing the tour with a guide or a group . Vvv

Terrible queing system , they should have more entry points not a good experience at all

Sandra was amazing and helpful! She thoroughly explained everything and answered all questions!

Sandra provided us with quick, professional and friendly service.

We had some difficulties with entry, staff working there is giving fake information, they lied to us that we cant enter with tickets bought from you. I called the infolinie and lady working there gave me contact to Ms. Helietta, who helped us a lot, provided all information and showed us where to go and what to do to enter the Basilic. We really appreciate her proffesionalism and kindness. We entered past our reservation time, because of the fake information given by the staff, thankfully your employees helped us a lot, especially Ms. Helietta. Thank you one more time.

Booked last minute. The tour guides Valeria and sofia were really helpful and friendly.

I had a very nice experince with Sandra and the group she explained and offered to take and show is the entry ofthe Vatican