Venice's Best: Basilica, Doge's Palace, Gondola & History Gallery

Knowledgable, experienced and friendly guide. She was great! Gondola ride was an added bonus.

Tour guide was very knowledgeable.

Avoid this tour at all costs!!!! In my experience on June 12, 2024, the tour was very misleading. It was sold as one seamless 3.5-hour experience starting at 9:00 AM in Piazza San Marco, but it was actually split into multiple separate tours with different meeting locations and a long gap in between. After finishing the first portion around 10:30 AM near St. Mark’s Basilica, we were told to make our own way to a second meeting point at Campo Santa Maria Formosa at 12:15 PM, with no clear instructions or guidance on how to get there. The portion covering St. Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace was fine, led by a guide named Marco, but after that the experience fell apart. Instead of the advertised continuous experience, we were placed on a separate scripted walking tour departing from Campo Santa Maria Formosa at 12:30 PM, followed by a very short, cookie-cutter gondola ride at 2:00 PM from a dock near Calle Larga Ascensione. The gondola ride lasted barely 20 minutes and included 4 or 5 other gondolas moving in a line, clearly designed for mass tourism rather than anything authentic. It felt like a joke. To make matters worse, attractions listed in the tour description, including the Correr Museum, the Archaeological Museum, and the Monumental Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana, were not included in our experience at any point during the day. These were explicitly advertised as part of the package, which cost approximately $100 per person. My family has spent several thousand dollars with Viator on tours during our trip to Italy, making this final experience especially disappointing. If you’re considering booking this tour, don’t. Just purchase a standalone St. Mark’s Basilica tour and a Doge’s Palace tour, and arrange a gondola ride independently—you’ll save several hundred dollars and avoid the confusion and frustration we experienced. Stay away.

The place were beautiful the lat part with gondola ride was great I couldn't understand anything the 1st tour guide was saying it was very unfortunate I would get the sane information if I would walk and look in my own.

The tour itself was good and informational. Be prepared to stand and listen a lot. The tour guide had vast knowledge and answered additional questions very well. We were given ear pieces and they were high volume, so pretty easy to hear. The tour guide did speak English but did have an Italian accent, of course. We signed up for the Basilica, Doge and the gondola. Be advised that different people on your tour will have different packages so we had people leave after the Basilica tour and then people join for the Doge tour. That part was a little chaotic and confusing but you just needed to pay attention a bit. They did give each person a red sticker with different letters on it signifying what parts of the tour you signed up for and everyone also received a packet with all your tickets for the day in it. For the gondola, you are more so just buying a ticket. (We also got access to the museum within 24 hours of our tour but we did not have time to do it.) The tour guide pointed where we would go at the end of the tour and gave some directions but we were responsible to get ourselves to the right place at the time they assigned us. It was another tour office we had to go to. Tour details itself Basilica : We toured the main part of the church. There were other parts people could go see but it was not included with Viator. We went to a couple spots and then would look around as the tour guide explained things. The majority of the time was at the front of the church. We were there in July and I was thankful to have my fan with me as it was warm while standing there. The tour ended in a spot where you could take a really neat picture of the inside of the church. Doge's palace: We went room to room with the tour guide. Again, be prepared to walk and stand, anywhere to sit was blocked off. There was one large room towards the middle/end of the tour where the tour guide helped us find seating to relax a bit. There was a lot of beautiful artwork and the guide was well informed. Then we got to tour the prisons and the bridge of sighs. Gondola: When you arrive to the tour area, you are directed to an opportunity to learn information about gondola history using a VR headset. After that, you are given an ear piece so that you can hear the tour guide as they walk you to the actual gondola. The volume is high but easy to hear. The ear piece was tricky to keep on but was manageable. The gondola ride itself was beautiful. They will assign you where to seat based on balancing weight. The gondola seated 5 people so if you are less than 5 you are paired with others. Our gondalier did not speak much. There was a QR code you could scan to listen to information.

Small very well run, your group. Using the viator booking then with the actual tour group was easy well run tour. English knowledgeable, helpful informative etc. even in the heat.

Really good and informative. Read dress code for basilica especially the ladies.

Well-organized and thoroughly explained tour. We did not have to wait anywhere. The audio system is improvable.

Although 29th June was swelteringly hot in St Marks Square this was a very interesting tour of the Basilica and Doges Palace with a great guide (Antonio had a sense of humour and was very informative) - I really enjoyed seeing the inside of the Palace and walking over Bridge of Sighs. The gondola museum with the 360 explanation of the history was fantastic and the gondola ride gave a different perspective to the canals. Another good guide, Veronica, also gave an explanation of the gondola in the museum and the Salute area as we were on the Grand Canal before the end of the tour.

I unfortunately did not enjoy this tour at all. Seeing the sights were great, but our tour guide was so boring. We had two little kids with us and did a bunch of tours through Italy which they loved. Multiple people took their audio pieces out and just looked around, we didn’t get great instructions on how to find the gondola ride so we didn’t do it. Wouldn’t book a tour like this again.