Of all the cathedrals in all of Italy the one that sits at the top of Orvieto might just be my…read morefavorite. The cathedral and all its Gothic architecture splendor is unlike anything I've seen before. Between the limestone stripes, gold mosaic tiles, vaulted ceilings, painted portraits and marble sculptures - visually - the building is absolutely stunning. Admission to enter and wander around is €3 and despite not being able to take photos it's well worth the price. Check out the interior of the cathedral, grab a panini and enjoy lunch on the steps outside, wander the town and take it all in. You're going to love Orvieto!

If Orvieto was the inspiration for Walt Disney's fairy tale Fantasyland, then Duomo Cathedral is…read morethe "Sleeping Beauty Castle" on steroids! My wife is Catholic, and she has never seen anything as splendid (and she has been to Notre Dame in Paris and the great cathedrals of Mexico City.) Like the other Yelper so aptly stated; °This is a very blinged out church," and is a MUST SEE if you are spending a week in Rome. The town of Orvieto is only 1 hour by Intercity Train from Termini Station (Rome's Grand Central). We were able to buy 2 Round Trip tickets for only $31 Euros (about $40 in US currency).

If you know me, you know I love a good cathedral and this one is pretty great…read more Orvieto is a gorgeous, perfect hill town crowned with this jewel of a church. Started in 1294 (!) it took 300+ years to build. There's plenty of art including spectacular frescos by Signorelli. When you look at the elaborate decor - inside and out- reflect that most of this is hand laid mosaic work. Incredible

If you can only visit one place in Orvieto, the Duomo should be it! This strikingly beautiful 14th…read morecentury cathedral is likely the crown jewel of the small mountain town. It has amazing statues (check out all 18 of them, including the two right in front of the altar-- the unbelievable Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin of the Annunciation! ) masterpiece frescos, and stained glass windows so vibrant that they etch into your heart! For just 5 Euros (at this writing) the beauty and memory you get is simply out of this world. A true marvel !!!

We loved using Smile and Ride! They were the nicest people we met in Pisa and they helped…read moreaccommodate us in every way possible. I would highly recommend using them for all your biking needs. Such an amazing ride to the coast and the bikes were comfortable. So easy to use and made our trip awesome.

Elena and Marco are great. They were very efficient and informative. We did the By The Sea tour…read morewith a great bike path through farmland ending up on the coast where we had a fantastic lunch. Then we used google maps to navigate to the Leaning Tower of Pisa! We rented E-bikes that were in excellent condition - the regular bikes looked well maintained too.

Our family of five adults booked a half day custom tour a few weeks in advance for the 2016 holiday…read moreseason (Christmas & New Year's Eve). Never one to put all my eggs in one basket, I also booked two other tours with competing tour guides in Florence. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would 100% use Florence Custom Tours for everything: food tour, museums, artisan shops, etc.. Scheduling the tour via email was easy and they even helped me modify one of their classic tours so my family and I could explore the city on our own terms. Our guide (Chiara) met us near our rented apartment and within a few feet started teaching us about hidden gems in the neighborhood that we had walked past dozens of times unnoticed. She was extremely knowledgable, courteous, patient, and also a "foodie" (Chiara helped mix in some delicious eats between our visits to the Uffizi and Galleria dell'Accademia). I would highly recommend Florence Custom Tours to anyone visiting this wonderful city and I will definitely be using them again upon my return.

From the owner: Custom Florence Tours tailors private & small group tours in Florence & Tuscany. Our Florence…read moretours focus on unique & off the beaten path sites as well as all the must see. Our Tuscany tours focus on small Chianti & Brunello wineries that have been rated 90 or more on Wine Spectator.

If you are looking for THE BEST tour in Rome, no need to look any further…read more We've been to Rome many times, but the experience we had with Max and the Easitaly team has been amazing. We spent two days touring with Max, the best guide in Italy!!! We discovered Rome from the view of a a real native roman, had the opportunity to taste the best and most authentic roman delicacies... what a great company! We love you guys!!! See you next time in Roma!

My mother, brother, and I were in Rome for 4 days and booked a private driving tour of Rome with…read moreEasitalty Tours. Our driver, Antonello, was absolutely amazing and I highly recommend him if you are thinking about this type of tour. He was so personable, had a lot of great knowledge to share, and fit in all the sights we wanted to see in the 5-hour tour. He knew the places to get out and take pictures and he made the experience in Rome a great one! Julia was our private tour guide at the Vatican. She was absolutely wonderful. She was so animated and shared with us the rooms and pieces she felt were the most important to see with only one day to explore the Vatican. We had such a wonderful time with her. She is one tour guide I will not forget! If you want an above-and-beyond experience at the Vatican, book with Easitalytours and request Julia. You will not be disappointed! This is the best Tour company out there. They are reasonably priced and the tour guides are absolutely top-notch!

ArtViva has really great ratings here and on that other travel review site, but our experience was…read moreunderwhelming. I found their pre-tour communication really unprofessional. I had reached out asking about a few different tours and inquiring whether we could bring our 4 year old. They responded promptly that we could, and offered us 10% off if we booked three or more tours. I responded yes, that sounds great, we want to book these three tours on such and such date. No response. I followed up, no response. Followed up again, no response. It was getting pretty close to our trip and I was nervous about things filling up, so I decided to just book online. It annoyed me that I couldn't get the discount they'd offered with an online booking, so I decided to only book two tours with ArtViva and get the third tour from someone else. So I booked the two tours online, choosing from their available dates and times, which seemed to track with reality (i.e., tours for museums weren't sold on Mondays when museums are closed). I almost immediately got an email that the date I had selected for our gelato making class wouldn't work and they would have to move it to some other date. Um, why did you sell us that date, then? I responded with some dates that worked and said we could also possibly do Monday if necessary. Of course they rescheduled us for Monday. Ok, fine, we moved some things around. Then right before we left for our trip they emailed us that actually it would have to be at 9 am on Monday. I was a little wary about that since it was our first full day and I thought we might be jetlagged and starting a tour that early wasn't a good plan. When I asked if we could keep the later time, they said they could keep our original date and time (Friday at 10 am). So much drama just to keep the times we had originally booked! I also asked them multiple times what the meeting point for the gelato class was, because I needed to know if we needed a stroller to get there. Our hotel was in central Florence, no more than a 15 minute walk from all major tourist attractions, so this was the only thing we would possibly need a stroller for. It was like pulling teeth to get a response. I think I had to email them three times before I finally got a response with the address, and it was indeed quite far from our hotel. The tours themselves were ok. We did a tour of the David and a gelato making class with ArtViva. In hindsight, we did not need a tour of the David. The tour only lasted about 30 minutes and cost about four times what museum skip-the-line tickets did, and while the David is amazing, but it's also impossible to miss. (A tour is much more important at the Uffizi, which has a much larger collection.) But I don't know that I can really fault ArtViva for that, it was kind of poor planning on my part. The gelato class was advertised by ArtViva as kid friendly and it is not. We did an actually kid friendly pasta making class at an agriturismo and the difference between them was like night and day. I knew it was not going to go well when we showed up and they told us they didn't have kid-sized aprons so my 4 year old just wouldn't get one (that went over like a lead balloon, as I'm sure anyone who has ever had a 4 year old can imagine). ArtViva had specifically requested our favorite gelato flavors in advance, and although we'd told them our favorite flavor was chocolate, the gelato chef had chosen to make a flavor that had wine, honey, mascarpone and orange extract as ingredients...not exactly kid-friendly. I'm also not sure what the purpose of asking your favorite flavor is if they totally ignore it? Fortunately they had some chocolate and caramel gelato in the freezer they kindly let us sample. The gelato chef was nice, and tried to roll with the situation, but it was clear she was not prepared for a kid and didn't have much if any experience cooking with kids. They really need to make it clearer this class is not set up for young kids. I know things are weird with Covid now, and I'm trying to cut them some slack, but I feel like the communication issues are not really related to Covid. Also I was mostly communicating with the owner, who is British, so this is not a language barrier issue at all. I would not rule out booking with ArtViva again if they had a tour I couldn't get anywhere else, but I would definitely not seek them out.

We had three tours in one day... which is enough to wear one down. Artviva's team made each tour…read moreinteresting, fun and their lively attitude's made for a wonderful day. Our first tour was a walking tour with Florimda. We walked through down town to review the architecture and history of the city. The second tour was to the Uffizi, which included a fantastic review of the statues outside the Uffizi and the art within it's walls. (Or maybe the walking tour included the statues... either way, one of the tours did!) The Uffizi tour was good, and I recommend allowing yourself time after the tour to go through the museum on your own in case you want to see something again... for an art lover, this tour could be considered too short. Our last tour was with Angelo to see Michelangelo's David. Angelo is VERY charismatic and the tour included a good amount information about the statue itself. I'm not sure that a tour is needed for the University, as long as you have the information you want on the art. I felt that what I learned from Angelo was definitely worthwhile, and I probably would not have taken the time to learn it on my own.

My wife, mother-in-law and I used this company. We were running about 3 minutes late, even though…read morethe messaging we received was very clear to be early. My mother-in-law is elderly and getting around with her took more time than expected. Still, we arrived at the staging area and the staff was still very pleasant and accommodating. You can tell they were getting us to hurry because they know the area would be overrun with other tour groups. They really wanted us to have the best time and experience there. And they sat us in a very good spot for the Wednesday audience with the Pope. I would definitely recommend this company.

Great tours! We did the Colosseum and Vatican tour. The Colosseum tour was with Ferdinando and his…read moreknowledge and passion for what he was showing us was obvious. He is definitely highly recommended. He is an archaeologist as well so he had a lot of fascinating things to share with us. We actually ran into him on three separate occasions in Rome by chance and he was great to talk to each time. The Colosseum tour we took also included the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill (both even more fascinating than the Colosseum in my opinion). The Vatican tour was with Claudia and she was equally as knowledgeable and fun! She obviously knew the folks she needed to to get around in this massive complex without having to wait for anything. The "no-line" entry most tours get has lines here. She had the hookup to get us even past those lines. The tour starts through the Vatican Museum and it was very crowded at the time we were there. She fought to make room for us to get in front of the masses to get a close look at all the things she wanted us to see. It was great to see her genuinely care about our experience. Just about every other tour group we saw in this places had at least 30 people in them. Both tours we took with Real Rome Tours had less than 10. We all had an equal opportunity to experience these beautiful sights with great knowledgable folks who even stuck around to answer any questions we had. They also give great recommendations on restaurants and other places you need to see while in Rome. Gerard was also a pleasure dealing with while booking our tours. He is well organized and gave us a great alternative when we wanted to do the Colosseum Underground tour that wasn't available. It worked out perfectly for us. I couldn't recommend Real Rome Tours any more.

The Colosseum is the most incredible thing I've ever seen on this planet. Nothing prepares you for…read morestanding in front of it in real life. The scale, the power, the history, everything about it is absolutely breathtaking. You can feel the history the moment you step inside. Knowing what happened there centuries ago gives you literal shivers. It's emotional, intense, and awe-inspiring all at once. Every stone tells a story, and it makes you feel so small in the best way possible. This is not just a landmark, it's an experience that stays with you forever. If you come to Rome and don't see the Colosseum, you missed everything. Rating: 10/10 -- unforgettable, unreal, legendary

Holy shit, the Colosseum. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen, a massive historical…read moremarvel, a monument to human ingenuity and cruelty, the highs and lows of our entire existence. You have to see it before you die. No photograph, no movie, can fully conjure the real thing. Its scale, its majesty, the psychic bridge it provides to a violent and fascinating past. Standing in the Colosseum is about as close as I've gotten to time travel. We booked a three-hour tour with Crown Tours, covering the Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum. This was definitely the way to go. I loved both the simplified logistics and the live, on-site history lesson. That said, if you're not the guided tour type, the Colosseum does kind of speak for itself. We went around noon on a Friday during low season, when it was busy but nowhere near peak crowding. I imagine a summertime visit with kids would be pretty uncomfortable. But the Colosseum is worth a fair amount of physical suffering. Maybe not being mauled and eaten by lions, but definitely a little body odor and heat. The Colosseum is both the largest standing amphitheater in the world and the largest ancient amphitheater ever built. These may be the least surprising facts I've ever read on Wikipedia. The place is named for its colossal size, and honestly that alone would make it worth visiting. The size, though, is maybe its third or fourth most notable feature. The architecture is iconic. I was about to start describing it, but everyone knows what the Colosseum looks like: it looks like the Colosseum. It looks both more and less like the Colosseum up close and from within. I don't remember the striations in the travertine walls from any history books. The interior is breathtaking. Our guide sat us down and we gawked at the tiered seating and arena of this enormous world wonder, a place that once accommodated some 50,000 spectators for any given event, where an estimated 400,000 people and a million animals met violent ends. It's kind of wild that any of this was a) allowed and b) how people got their kicks, but the enthusiasm for brutality is comprehensible enough in 2025. I know exactly who would be in the stands with popcorn, watching people whose lives hold no value for them fighting to the death. Our tour ended on the ground floor of the Colosseum, and we wandered the upper level on our own, looking down at the arena and the exposed underground, which required its own ticket and didn't seem to have many visitors. We visited the gift shop and bought a postcard for our kids, though I don't quite know how to explain this place to our five- and three-year-old sons. I hope to bring them in person one day, when they're older and more knowledgeable about the ways of the world. There might be heat, there might be crowds, but they'll have to see the Colosseum.

How can I even begin to thank ITER tours!? Our trip to Ponza and Palmerola was nothing short of…read moreincredible! Initially we had been cancelled on by a different company on Viator and ITER tours saved The day and the trip! They made this once in a life time adventure so easy and accommodating. The trip to Ponza was very fun and comfortable on the fast ferry over from port de Anzio and the excursion boat was such a blast! Our guide was incredibly knowledgable about Rome and the islands and was super fun and interesting. We had spent so much time in the city during our ten day trip and I can honestly say that ITER tours tour to Ponza and Palmerola was one of my most treasured memories from the whole trip. Take this trip and use this company you will not be disappointed!

If you like learning about the 'darker' side of the history of a city, then you will enjoy the…read morecriminal history tour in Rome. Michele was my tour guide and he was very knowledgeable and I learned quite a bit. Not to mention, this is a walking tour so you get to see some of the major sites of Rome.

We had never travelled to Europe before and were looking for a special way to celebrate 30 years of…read moremarriage. When we found the Wine & Cooking in the Heart of Chianti and Florence, Tuscany trip on the CDV website, it seemed like everything we were looking for. Now that we are home, we look back fondly on a perfect vacation, and know we can't wait another 30 years to do it again. From the initial planning, CDV was super responsive and helpful in answering all our questions, and they sent detailed information about what to expect. When we departed for our trip, we felt comfortable that we were in good hands. Then, from the moment we arrived at the Florence airport, our host Lorenzo took over led us on the trip of a lifetime. The entire week was very well planned and organized, and we went to so many fabulous places, but whenever we discuss our trip, the thing that stands out most is the people we got to meet and spend time with: Lorenzo is an amazing host - fun, passionate, patient and knowledgeable. He did a great job transforming our group from strangers to close friends by dinner on the first day. He is a great person and we feel so fortunate to have met him. We still keep in touch with Lorenzo on WhatsApp. Gianfranco was not just our bus driver. He is part of our CDV family. Yes he got us safely from point A to points B, C and D comfortably and safely every day, but he also cooked with us, dined with us, and had fun with us. Unfortunately for Gianfranco, his job did not allow him to drink wine with us. Simonetta - our amazing chef and cooking teacher. We had two cooking classes with Simonetta and she prepared two of our dinners. I could talk about Simonetta for hours, but for this review I will just say that we love her. The cooking classes were so much fun and she is very special. CDV has close relationships with all the people we visited, and we especially enjoyed our time with Mourizio at Piombia; Enrico at De Rici - what a fun guy he is; Patrizia our cooking teacher in the Cortona countryside; Piero at Poggerino; and especially Simone and Chris at Castellinuzza e Piuca - I don't remember having a more fun evening than our time with Simone and Chris. There are too many others to list them all here, but every host was gracious and engaging. Grazie Mille CDV for a trip we will never forget!

VACATION OF A LIFETIME - ABSOLUTELY AMAZING…read more My lifelong dream has always been to go to Tuscany. After considering all options, I chose the Culture Discovery "Wine and Cooking Under the Tuscan and Umbrian Sun" vacation. I wanted to see the countryside, the small towns, the history and how the people really live. CDV gave me exactly what I was hoping for, and so much more. Italy was everything I had ever imagined it would be - the people; the food; the ancient, interesting small, hill towns; the spectacular scenery. I cannot say enough about how friendly, warm and welcoming every single person was. They truly made us feel like we were one of the family - family I would love to visit often. The other guests on the tour were a wide range of ages and from all walks of life. They were interesting and fun and everyone came together to have and make the best possible experience they possibly could. The small group size also contributed to that feeling of family. Our accommodation was absolutely gorgeous and CDV had thought of every possible comfort and welcoming kindness. The sightseeing trips were wonderfully selected, the cooking classes were more interesting and fun than one could hope for and the food and drink were just plain amazing. I would never consider traveling with another company after the incredible time I had with CDV.