VIP Extra - Private Vatican Tour with Panoramic Terrace Breakfast
Description
Enjoy a comfortable pick-up service to a beautiful terrace, where you will start your day with a traditional Italian breakfast overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica. Here, you will meet your expert guide, who will accompany you throughout the experience. After breakfast, your guide will escort you to the Vatican Museums, allowing you to discover their extraordinary collections in a relaxed and engaging way. Your private guide will lead you through the highlights of the Vatican Museums, starting from the Pio Clementino Museum, followed by the Gallery of the Candelabra, the Gallery of Tapestries, the Gallery of Maps, the Raphael Rooms, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. If full names are not provided at least 72 hours before the tour, access to St. Peter’s Basilica cannot be guaranteed. This policy also applies to any bookings made within 72 hours of the tour date. PLEASE NOTE: due to occasional religious events, St. Peter’s Basilica may close without prior notice.
Tour Options
Itinerary
Enjoy an Italian breakfast with an spectacular rooftop view of St. Peter's Basilica. The direct frontal alignment and elevated terrace perspective causes the dome to appear significantly closer, creating a striking optical illusion.
Enter the Vatican Museums as soon as they open for a quieter, more intimate experience of the papal collections.
Discover classical masterpieces, including ancient Roman and Greek sculptures displayed in the elegant Octagonal Courtyard.
Walk through grand marble halls adorned with monumental candelabra and exquisite Roman copies of Greek originals.
Admire vibrant Flemish tapestries whose intricate details and perspective effects seem to follow you as you pass.
Explore a spectacular corridor lined with 16th-century topographical maps of Italy, painted in rich color and detail.
Step into the Renaissance brilliance of Raphael’s frescoes, including the famed School of Athens.
Experience Michelangelo’s breathtaking ceiling and Last Judgment in one of the world’s most revered artistic sanctuaries.
Conclude inside the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica, home to Michelangelo’s Pietà and Bernini’s magnificent Baldachin — a powerful finale to your VIP Vatican journey.
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Wheelchair accessible
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Transportation options are wheelchair accessible
- Travelers should have at least a moderate level of physical fitness
- Children must be accompanied by an adult
- A dress code is required to enter places of worship and selected museums. No shorts or sleeveless tops allowed. Knees and shoulders MUST be covered for both men and women. You may risk refused entry if you fail to comply with these dress requirements
Reviews(10)
Very nice tour. Needed an early morning tour and this worked well. Our guide was knowledgeable and the tour was as described. Breakfast was not inside the Vatican, which we preferred, as we had a tight schedule. We had breakfast right outside the entrance at a nice little restaurant, then went inside upon opening.
This tour does NOT include breakfast! If we had known that we would have eaten before the tour. Since breakfast wasn’t included we had to leave early because we were starving. The tour itself was fine and I’m sure we would have loved it if we weren’t so hungry.
Dear Jennifer, We informed you the day before that breakfast would have been offered before the tour so you won't lose the direct passage to St Peter's Basilica after the tour. However, once at the meeting point, you went on your own and got your own breakfast (and paid for it) instead of getting instructions from our coordinator. We are very sorry the communication with you didn't work as we wanted you to enjoy all three sections of the Vatican, including the St Peter's Basilica afterwards (instead of breakfast after the tour). Probably the Basilica wasn't on your checklist and we are sorry we assumed that saving you hours of time in the line, by bringing you directly to the Basilica and offering the breakfast before the tour would have been a nice thought from our side. However, thank you very much for taking some time to leave your review. Safe travels!
Sean was very helpful in getting our group set up - including pertinent information related to travel in the Vatican for the following day! He sets up a really great trip! Renate the actual tour guide was very knowledgeable. Would recommend!
Fantastic tour, very impressed! Great way to experience Vatican, Colloseum, Roman Forum... Tour Guides were outstanding. Very knowledgeable, high professionals. Great value, everything was very well-organized. I would definitely book with City Lights Rome again!
The manager of this tour, Sean, was honest and clear about what we were getting in our 'package' and provided us with an extraordinarily gifted and well informed guide, Armaldo, who took our group of only five into the Holy City and made the experience vivid, dramatic and memorable. One of our Rome highlights.
I have been to the Vatican three times. This last time, on Jan 2nd, we decided to take a guided tour. I don't usually respond to promoters in the street, but Mick promised us a skip-the-line ticket, and a guided tour for a little more than the price of a skip-the-line ticket on its own. He also promised small groups and a knowledgeable guide. What we got was much more than he promised! Alberto, the guide, was super knowledgeable about the Vatican and loved what he did and it showed. We asked him all sorts of questions, and he provided what was a history of the Rome through this history of the Vatican. My husband and him also geeked out on old Italian movies. The Vatican is so vast that a tour, we learned, is necessary. Things we'd seen twice before were brought into a completely different light. Do the tour! Do it with this company whose employees clearly love what they do! (Also, we only had two other people on our tour! And, what they don't tell you is if you go on a guided Vatican tour you also skip the line at St Peter's because there's a back entry from the Sistine Chapel.)
Dear Heba, thank you for such nice and detailed review. We put a lot of attention on our costumer-care, before, during and after the tour. In a busy city like Rome, it's always useful to have locals to assist you. We are very glad to have you had on our tour with Alberto. Thank you again and we hope we will have a chance to see you again in Rome
<p>It's a great tour if you're not looking to spend hours and hours at the Vatican-which is very possible to do. Our guide was knowledgeable about Michelangelo and the areas and art leading to the Chapel. He talked a lot...and that left little time for a comfort stop and touring the Basilica, which we had to do on our own because the guides can't talk in the holy places. He was also not correct about the time the church was closing so that made it even worse. Overall...enjoyable.</p>
<p>I enjoyed the paintings and sculptures. Guide didn't use a flag and was hard to keep up with. We lost a CA girl. Too rushed. Cut from 3 hr to 2.5 hr. Guess he had somewhere else to go. Would use another company on this one.</p>
