We are in Rome, Florence and Venice during the first two weeks of November. Will it be necessary to pre-reserve tickets for the Vatican tour and Borghese Gallery in Rome or for the Ufizzi and Academia in Florence at that time? What about Venice?
Posted by
Seattle, WA
1317 posts
Borghese always requires reservations--it's part of their system.
We pre-purchased tickets for the Vatican on a Thursday morning when we were there in November 2008 which turned out to not be necessary. However, the small reservation fee was worth the peace of mind as you never know when you might get stuck behind a number of tour groups. Your call--if you plan to go on a busier day such as Saturday or Monday, you might want to go ahead and reserve.
On a separate trip, we pre-reserved for the Uffizi (where we had a private guide) and the Accademia. Again, neither one was strictly necessary. Since you pick your tickets up at the Accademia, our guide advised us to just not mention that we had reserved them if things weren't busy, and so we saved the reservation fee there.
Can't help you with Venice.
Posted by
Pa and Italy
4152 posts
You must always make a reservation at the Borghese. You can just show up to see if someone has missed their reservation but I don't know how successful you'll be.
For the Vatican museums if you go in the afternoon in November you really won't need to prepurchase tickets. The line will be short or non-existent. If you wish to go in the morning I would suggest pre-purchasing tickets.
Donna
Posted by
Tel Aviv
15771 posts
The only Venice attraction that you might need to buy in advance is the Secret Itinerary Tour (I really enjoyed it) at the Doge's Palace.
But do go to the Venice Connected website - you can save quite a bit by buying vaporetto passes in advance. There may be a small savings on buying museum tickets. I got a better deal on those at the Venice museum site - http://www.museiciviciveneziani.it/?lin=EN