Rome- organized tours of colliseum/palatine hill, and vatican

Walks of Italy has tours that suit your needs
Their Pristine Sistine is definitely worth the cost

Pretty sure they offer a Rick Steves discount
Code RS10 maybe? Do a search here on forum, it should pop up
Or email them and ask

https://www.walksofitaly.com/

I won’t be the only one here to vouch for Walks of Italy tours. If you’re able to get up early and want to spend a little time (29 or 30 minutes) in the Sistine Chapel without the massive crowd then look for the early morning tickets. They meet up at 7am or so and get in before the museum opens to everyone else. You head straight for the chapel first, view it when seating is available because even with other tours doing the same thing, it’s far less crowded than later in the day. They hit the highlights of the museum and cut through to the chapel again to St. Peter’s. We quickly walked through the basilica and were in front to see the changing of the guard at 11, and then the tour ended and you could go back inside or up to the roof on your own. Or call it good and you still have most the day to play with. It’s an early start but worth it and the square is quite nice to see before you meet up when it’s quiet and mostly empty.

1. You can't visit Vatican City, only the Museum, the square and the Basilica of Saint Peters. Before Covid there was also a tour of the gardens and the archaeological area under the Church.
2. The Basilica and the square are free, nobody skips the security line to enter Saint Peters.
3. There are no "skip the line tickets" and those who tell you "it's important" usually are the companies selling general entry tickets at an inflated price. Or tourists who were scammed this way before you.
4. If you don't want to wait in queue to purchase entrance tickets, just get tickets in advance on the official sites. Then there is the security line, and nobody skips it. Then you are in. Yes, you got it right: There is no third line that you can skip paying more.
5. The security line isn't that long to justify paying for a tour in the hope of skipping it. And most tour groups are not entitled to a separate entry with a different security line. Ask about it before paying for a tour.
6. On the other hand, If you are actually interested in a tour, the best ones are offered by the Vatican itself. Second best, imho, is Context Italy because of small groups and knowledgeable guides. Unfortunately it's expensive and I don't know if it survived Covid
7. The Roman forum needs a tour to be enjoyed, otherwise it's only a nice stroll surrounded by ancient rocks. I dare to say that if one isn't interested in Roman History, stuff like the rocks where Cicero's head and hands where exposed is not that interesting even during a tour. My all high school class cheered when the guide told where we were, but we had waisted the best hours of our youth trying to translate Cicero's babbling about virtues.

Hi Stephanie,
Dario gave you good information. You do not need to book with a tour company to “skip the line”, just purchase your tickets ahead of time direct from the website of your given site. If you prefer a tour, the Colosseum has a fantastic educational tour that includes the underground & arena floor for around 34€. The tour lasts about 1.5hrs and the group was around 20 people (I think max is 25). You then have free reign of the upper levels.

For the Vatican, again you can purchase tickets ahead of time. You can purchase an audio guide for a small fee to get the history of what you’re looking at. If you prefer a tour group, I would suggest the Roman Guy.

Happy Travels
Amanda

Yep, good info by the folks above! Just as a followup, this is the Colosseum tour Amanda was talking about, and a good choice for visitors interested only/mainly in this monument:

https://www.coopculture.it/en/products/the-wonders-of-the-colosseum-visiting-the-underground-and-the-arena/

But the narrated tour is ONLY of the Colosseum. I'll absolutely agree with Dario that the Forum and Palatine - which are located very nearby, and are included in the ticket above but without a guide - are deserving of a guided tour to explain what you're looking at; they're much more complex. Coopculture, the official website for the complex, used to provide a combo tour of all three but isn't doing so at this time. You might consider a tour by the same company Christine suggested above for the Vatican Museums? The one linked below does include the colosseum underground, and runs about 4 hours so fits the bill of a 1/2 day tour. They don't currently offer them every day, however.

https://www.walksofitaly.com/rome-tours/colosseum-underground-tours/

Backing up Christine, the WOI tours have been recommended on this forum by many posters who've taken them. Their "Pristine Sistine" tour (not offered on Sundays or Wednesdays) is especially popular. Others have reviewed The Roman Guy's tours favorably as well.

https://theromanguy.com/tours/italy

The Vatican offers its own early-entrance museum tour, that also includes breakfast, for € 46.00 per adult: a more affordable price for tourists on a budget. It's the "Prime experience - Vatican Museums" tour for 1-25 persons:

https://tickets.museivaticani.va/home/fromtag/1/1642744800000/Biglietti-Musei

But whatever you do, definitely buy either advance, timed-entry tickets OR tours for both the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum/Forum/Palatine. High season is traditionally crazy busy at both!

We have never done a tour of the Forum-we found the one in Rick's book to be sufficient.
EDITED: Sorry, we have done tours of the Vatican and did the Friday night entrance once. I meant the Forum.

Right. It's just that some visitors like being able to get into the museum before the general public, so they can see the Sistine before it's a complete zoo in there. That can't be accomplished with Rick's audioguide and just a general-entry ticket.

There are early-entrance tickets that ONLY include a guide to take you immediately to the Sistine - a 20-30 minute walk - and then you're on your own for the rest of the day but I can't see paying the prices i'm seeing for those. I'm looking at one right now through City Wonders for $66.63 pp. Shoot, guides aren't even supposed to speak inside the chapel so other than guiding you directly TO it, along with the other folks with early-entrance tickets/tours, I'm not sure how they justify the $$.

We are here now and went on both tours with Through Eternity. College age kids. Tours were private. Our guide Thomas for the vatican was EXCEPTIONAL!

Aimee, a key point:

Of course, I also don't know how busy it will be on a Wednesday 3:30pm
ticket in later January right now.

Yours is a very different situation than the OP's. They will be traveling during high season and you won't so I don't think you need an early entry ticket. Additionally, see this recent post (last one in the thread) from a traveler who is in Rome right now; she writes. "By the way, Vatican and colosseum were not crowded!"

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/4-days-in-rome-first-timers-best-tours

I don't expect that situation will change much over the next 3-4 weeks.

Still, I don't think there's any real way to completely avoid being in close proximity now and again with groups of others here and there in Rome. Based on another post, you appear to be concerned about testing positive and quarantine mandates? Best to take JJ's caution to heart?

I would definitely make sure that you understand the rules for
quarantine and have a contingency plan should someone test positive.
There were many tense moments for us.

The Roman forum needs a tour to be enjoyed, otherwise it's only a nice
stroll surrounded by ancient rocks.

Wise words and similar to what my wife and I tell people. A good tour brings those piles of rocks to life. We used https://www.througheternity.com/ for tours of the Vatican and Colosseum/Forum. In our opinion it is by far the best tour company we've found so far anywhere in Europe.

Aimee, I believe there are no early entrance tours to the Vatican currently. At least, that was the case when I was there in November.

We did a tour with The Roman Guy (highly recommended), and it wasn't horribly busy in the Sistine Chapel in November. I'm thinking the situation will be similar now.

BB, you are spot on; the Vatican wasn't allowing early entrance tours for a period of time. However, a check of the websites for a couple of the better tour providers (WOI; Roman Guy) shows that they have both removed the text apologizing for that issue. So, it appears that early entrance is back on, at least for the time being.

What has NOT changed is tour access directly into St Peter's via an internal passage between Sistine and basilica. That passage is closed to all so tours which include both museums + church have to access St. Pete's from a longer external route. Text apologizing for that still appears on both websites.

Ah. Thanks for the updated info, Kathy.

Re: the tour entrance to the basilica, our guide told us that the Vatican was considering keeping that permanently closed.

I did the €80 (normally €89) Walks of Italy Pristine Sistine tour Saturday morning and found it well worth the cost. Indeed we met up at 7 am and had breakfast (!) and then were in the Sistine Chapel with only 15 or 20 other people besides our own group (our group had 14 people).

Towards the end of the tour (so only a couple of hours later), we circled back through the Sistine Chapel as a way to get where we needed to go next — and I was SO GLAD we had been in there earlier — happy to have missed the higher temperature in there due to the body heat alone !!!!

Someone noted this:

They hit the highlights of the museum and cut through to the chapel again to St. Peter’s.

However, currently due to Covid the passageway between the Chapel and St Peters is closed, so the tours do NOT go in the church. You could of course go on your own.

You're correct that the passageway is closed, but some tours do go in the church. The one we did with The Roman Guy did. We simply walked around and waited in the line as a group.

We went in February 2019 so my experience was not only off-season, but also pre-pandemic, so I may not have much to offer. I will say that our experience with Walks of Italy was fantastic. We had two full days (Tuesday and a Wednesday) in Rome. We knew we wanted to use our time wisely, so after studying this forum and Rick Steve's books, we booked tours of the Vatican as well as Colosseum and it was worth the money and the time. Our guides were professional, personable and knowledgeable and our groups were a perfect size (for that time). We are headed back to Florence this year and will research booking with WOI again.