We did the Rome in a Day Tour with Vatican, Colosseum & Historic Center with Walks and it was…read morephenomenal. With an early start we were able to see several of the key sites including the colosseum and Vatican City. Our guides were amazing and so knowledgeable.

We booked the 'Complete Vatican City Tour' with "Walks of Italy" to avoid the lines and have easy…read moreaccess to the magnificent historical site. The three hours Vatican City tour consisted of: all Vatican city museums, the Sistine Chapel and Saint Peter's Basilica. The company was very thorough in confirming our tour date, through several emails and texts a few days prior to our meeting, the exact location and meeting time. We all gathered 15 minutes before the tour began. We were a group of approximately 15 English speaking tourists from US, UK, Australia, and Denmark. It was a hot day, but our tour guide Emilia was fabulous. Made sure we avoided the hot sun and stayed hydrated. We could tell Emilia was very well versed in her knowledge of Art history, Architecture and spoke perfect English. She kept us well-informed and answered questions. Plus she was pregnant! We graciously tipped her at the finale of the tour. I highly recommend this tour! Grazie mille !

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.

Viator (TripAdvisor) decided to delete my reviews, saying it did not meet their "review…read moreguidelines". So I will publish it here: Paris Montmartre Food & Wine Tour with Eating Europe Ile-de-France, France Worth every penny This was the best food tour I have ever been on. Food was amazing and we were given so much information-life changing. Thank you so much!!!

Our family of four joined another six people on the Testaccio 15-year anniversary tour and lucked…read moreout with Edma as our guide - not shown on their web site, so don't know how we got her. She was instantly personable, funny, thoughtful, and energetic without being nutty. We had a great first stop that ended up being a restaurant (Masto) we were delighted to return to later in the week and the owner happened to be there and we had a wonderful time with her again, and enjoyed the dinner just as we had the tasting. The stops were great, the walking easy, the food good, and Edma was a fountain of local geography and food culture information. We all felt like we got great value and were happy with the experience!

We had a fantastic time on the Rome on a Golf Cart Semi-Private Tour with LivTours, guided by…read moreChris. He was personable, clear in his explanations, and attentive to our needs throughout the tour. What made it especially memorable was how he connected with our kids--getting them excited about gelato was a fun touch that they still talk about! The golf cart was a lifesaver, making it easy to visit several sites that would have been impossible to reach with a 5-year-old and 2-year-old in tow. We even opted for the cart to pick us up from the hotel so it was seamless from beginning to end. The car seat for our youngest was clutch. Actually the ride was so soothing that our 2 year old fell asleep for part of the trip. Chris also introduced us to the Roman Orange Garden, a peaceful spot we'd never have found on our own. While many sites in Rome are walkable, this tour gave us the freedom to explore comfortably as a family, and we truly appreciated the balance of convenience and insight. If you are someone who love to do all the research ahead of time, then maybe this tour is too surface level for you. I would recommend a more targeted tour for the Coliseum or Vatican City. Otherwise, I'd highly recommend LivTours--and especially Chris--for families looking for an stress-free way to experience Rome.

(Night Time Vatican Tour)…read more We really enjoyed the Vatican, but felt like our guide was rushing us while we were walking through. But the Vatican is big, so we assumed she wanted to show us other portions of the grounds. Our tour was supposed to go until 8 PM, but she ended things at 7 PM. She said we could walk back into the last wing of the museum to see things on our own but security would not allow us to walk back in. We spent seconds / maybe minutes, looking at whole sections of art. She left almost no time to stand and look at things, everything was "ok let's keep going". Although we still enjoyed things, we definitely left extremely disappointed given the cost of the experience. (We paid 318€ for two people to tour - 60€ was the cost of the tickets, so 258€ was the cost of the tour guide.

Francesco was our guide for the semi private Colosseum Arena Floor, Forum and Palatine Hill. He…read morewas very knowledgeable and interactive so it made the tour so enjoyable! Well worth the extra money from a larger group.

Our Colisseum tour which we purchased from the Tour Guy was apparently sold to Gladiator Tours who…read moresold it to another tour Company and in spite of paying for a small group tour with Arena level entry, our whole group was denied access to the Colosseum. Beware The Tour Guy!

Want a guided tour for low cost? This one is technically Free. This is a great way to be educated…read moreabout the sites rather than just showing up for a picture without any reference. Our tour guide, Laura, was informative and a trooper on a rainy day that included many who defected from our group once the wind kicked in. You get to stop at Rome's top sites. When it's over, you donate whatever is on your heart. The guides work on donations only. My only complaint is that after two hours, the tour stops, and you're pretty far from where you started. So we got lost trying to get back, eventually giving up and hailing a taxi. Book your ticket online, and be directed to the meeting point. Highly recommended.

After being denied by another tour company for not having reservations, I contacted this one to…read moremake sure we didn't need one for their 4:30PM evening Colosseum tour and luckily we didn't. The meeting point is NEAR the spanish steps in front of the statue by the Versace building. Our tour guide was Fredricka (sp?) and she is a TRUE local Italian! She took us all around the city, stopped at the Trevi Fountain, Victor Emmanuel Monument, the Forum of Cesar and towards the Coloseum. We ended the tour right around sunset at the Colosseum which made for AMAZING photo ops! Fredricka is SUPER knowledgeable about the city and its history that everyone in our group was extremely impressed by her tour! She even recommended a small cute little local restaurant to us nearby that we would have NEVER found because it was so hidden from the main busy street. Definitely do the city tour with this company and if you get Fredricka, that's a bonus!

This is a great tour company. The guides are well knowledgeable and have a true passion for the…read morecity! They also know about the not so touristy spots you can venture to if you want to explore. Offering such a great tour for free is amazing, but make sure you tip your guides well! They deserve it!

This is a free walking tour around Rome. Most tours that you have to pay for do not tell you about…read morethe history around it, but this tour does. The tour gives a history of the city, an introduction to Christianity and origins of Rome. The tour is about 3hrs long but it covers Porta del Popolo, Piazza del Popolo, the Tomb of Augustus, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Fountain of the Four Rivers, Ponte, Sant'Angelo, Castel Sant'Angelo, and gives an introduction to the Vatican. The tour guides also give recommendations to places to eat, visit, nightlife locations, and discounts towards the skip-the-line Vatican tour. I highly recommend the Rome's Ultimate tour. You would have to make reservations online ahead of time.

Do not book this tour! The tour guide was Andrea and she was rude, they separated our group and she…read morewas not willing to answer. She told me to stop talking as I was talking about the rest of our group. They told us tour was at 9:45 and it didn't start until 10:45 am. The tour guide also wasn't explaining much and wasn't tech savvy. Took forever to even get our tickets on her phone. She got mad I was trying o take a photo and told me I could come back later but she stopped to answer a personal phone call. Book through someone else!

Only tour in my life where we had to look up Wikipedia DURING the tour…read more My Italian friend recommended this agency because we are Catholic, coming for the Jubilee and wanted a religion-centered tour - Jubilee/Early Christianity. The other people on our tour were also devout Catholic. I believe the tour was done by Maria Lazara. We do not know her name because she did not bother to introduce herself, nor did she ask our names (aside from checking our family name off). We met at the statue and then without any introduction to our tour, nor introduction to the St John of Laterna Church, she marched off in front of us to the Church's portico. It was a bad start. That's the main complaint: she gave no introduction to the tour or any site, she gave no church or historic context on how things came to be or how they evolved. She gave no Catholic perspective. A tour guide needs to be a storyteller! And I expected a guide well-versed in church history, both religious and urban! Instead, it was a bunch of random historic facts. She primarily spent her time pointing out symbolism in the paintings and mosaics. Clearly, she majored in art history, and the history of Christianity was a boring sideline to her. She liked pointing out that Laterna was populated early, while most of Rome was countryside - but why? How did that change? Where did Catholics live and why did they move? Why were these churches chosen for their Holy Doors? Why only 4 doors? She told us the Laterna Holy Door was an original bronze and a couple more facts and then we marched through as it were nothing. Nothing about why it is special that they are open, how Catholics view this moment, etc. IT IS SPECIAL. In speaking about the Jubilee, the only thing she said was that the Pope first started it once every 100 years, and since the Roman townspeople made money on tourism from the incoming pilgrims, they moved it to every 33 years or when they wanted. That's it - Jubilees were about making tourism dollars. End of her story. None of our group of 3 heard that the Sacred Steps were brought from Jerusalem and why, and where they were placed originally. All she did was say "it is not a hard job to move stairs." THEY ARE SPECIAL. She just said: you can up if you want, I'll wait here on my phone. Again, her specialty seemed to be art history not Catholic traditions or history, and 75% of the time, she spoke about symbolism. The blue and yellow of Mary, the keys of St. Peter. That's fine but there was no narrative, no church history. The tour ended exactly at 12 p.m. Clearly, she was glad to be out of there. Another note - yes, her English vocabulary was good, but she spoke sing-song Italian style and it was hard to follow her. She does not have the cadence of an English speaker. Very disappointed in Eternity Tours' guide. Aside: I really enjoyed Eternity Tours newsletter mailings.

Such a fun experience. This was my first cooking class ever. Chef Andrea made the class…read moreunforgettable. We went with friends and had a blast cooking. After cooking we had a dinner with what we cooked. Awesome wine served at dinner too. I've already told my wife that we are getting a class every time we go to Rome. But only with Chef Andrea!!

If I could give 6 stars I would! From the moment we entered, Chef Andrea made our family feel so…read morewelcomed. Wine and water were ready for us and made the mingling with the other delightful family a joy. My family learned more than how to cook, we learned what to cook (and when!) and history behind Roman dishes. Chef Andrea is so passionate about his craft and it was contagious because my family talks about how this experience was one of the best we've ever had as a family and in Rome itself. Be open to talking and sharing time - the human connection is essential to cooking. Don't do those tacky tourist places please!!!!! This is why you started looking for a cooking class. I promise you will write just as stellar a review as I have. Chef Andrea, if you are reading this, my family in Miami, FL can't stop talking about the best artichokes and chicken they have ever had. Thank you for making my family have this shared memory that will last a lifetime.

We booked an early morning Vatican tour with What a Life Tours for our trip to Rome last month, and…read moreit was an A+ way to explore the world's smallest country. We could've visited on our own, as many obviously do, but it was great to have a skilled guide to put all that marble and history in context. We'd already paid to come to Rome and set aside a morning to see Vatican City. The added value we got out of the tour far outweighed the incremental expense. I found the tour on Get Your Guide, where it was highly rated with thousands of reviews, and I liked that it was a small group situation, with a maximum of ten participants. We received strict instructions to arrive before 7:45 at the What a Life office, within walking distance of the Vatican. We checked in and got assigned to our tour group, with an amazing guide named Giulia. She set us up with audio devices that let us hear her through our earphones even when she was just whispering--a cool bit of tech I'd never encountered before, but saw again twice more before leaving Italy. We arrived in time to enter the Vatican Museums right at 8:00, the start of visiting hours. Our tickets allowed us to skip the line, which was nice in mid-November, but no doubt doubly nice during peak season. Giulia was fantastic, so smart and informative and funny. She knew how to corral us, and I got the sense that she could work very easily under much worse conditions. She let us know how lucky we were to see the Vatican on such a quiet morning. There were plenty of people, but the crowd was apparently nothing compared to the crush of summer or early fall. The Vatican is so grand it was almost overwhelming, and it was extremely helpful to have a guide to keep us oriented. She gave us so much insight into what we were seeing, pointing out the highlights and offering a running commentary with a dry wit that was all Giulia. In the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Museums, she showed my husband where he could find the village his family came from, painted on a 16th-century Fresco. She also prepared us well for the Sistine Chapel, where visitors are not allowed to talk, using down moments to tell us about the chapel and its artwork, with the aid of a well labeled print-out. The tour was three hours long and encompassed the museums, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. We could've spent several more hours in the museums alone, but we saw a lot, moving at a pretty brisk pace. The tour was very well calibrated. I can't think of a single thing I would have changed. I thought about booking our Colosseum tour through What a Life (would've saved me a review) but saw that the one they offered had very few ratings, compared to the thousands they had for the Vatican. I'm curious what their other tours are like, and have more confidence in the company overall after going on this one. If you're visiting the Vatican, in any case, What a Life Tours is a top notch provider. We saw and learned so much in those three hours, and had a truly wonderful time.

We did the early entry (7:45 am) tour with Jeannette. She was amazing. Her knowledge was expansive…read moreand being an art historian made it even more amazing. She not only covered the immense history of the Vatican, but her knowledge of the artists and their works was very helpful. I would not hesitate to recommend her and thus company. It was limited to a group of ten made it so easy to stay together and not lose anyone.