Vatican and St Peter's with tour group

Angel Tours told us that the Vatican administration does not allow any tours in St Peters unless they are conducted in Italian. That was very disappointing to us - especially when we then saw English speaking tour guides in the cathedral! Not sure if those ones just got lucky for not being booted out or if Angel Tours was telling us bs ... like their promise of small groups and then there are 19 of us. But despite that disappointment, all in all I'd certainly recommend Angel Tours and would use them again. Very informative and certainly not boring.

Kathy, there were many tour groups that moved from the Vatican to St. Peter's. We took a Romewalks tour, but sadly would not recommend them. It seemed like a typical bait and switch, offering small groups of 2-10 people, then when we showed up there were 18 of us. Also, the tour took so much time in the Vatican, by the time we got to St.Peter's the guide spent about 10 minutes with us and that was it. Tired, and not having our guidebook with us we left. For what it's worth, we returned to St. Peter's a few days later (it's free) and followed the RS's tour from the book, and it was fabulous. If I had to do it again I would self tour both places, and likely on different days. Have fun....

We did the Angel Tour a few weeks ago. According to our tour guide, the cardinal in charge of St. Peters is unhappy with non-Vatican tour guides right now. The story we got was that about a month ago (May 08), the cardinal heard that some tour guide questioned the virginity of the Virgin Mary, and issued an edict that no non-Vatican tours would be allowed in St. Peters. True or not, I don't know - it's just the story our guide heard.

We elected to smuggle in our guide - he carried a Rick Steves tour book with him so he looked like a tourist and walked us through.

He was a terrific guide by the way. He could have avoided the tour of St. Peters based on the rules set out by the cardinal, but he went out of his way to make sure we got to see as much as possible. After that many of us went to a local restaurant and he joined us. I can't say enough good things about Angel Tours.

3 Millennia includes St. Peter's. We used 3 Millennia on the 27th of June, and we were extremely pleased. I would highly recommend them. Their groups are no more than 10 people, and ours ended up just being our family of 5. We had no line (although, it's not a skip the line tour), and we had a wonderful 3 hour tour.

We did Angel tours, it does include St Peters. Email them for more info. The tour guide was amazing and soooo much fun!!! We skipped a huge line, it had to be around 4 miles long!

Thank you all for your responses. Just finished reserving our time for the Borghese Gallery and booking with Angel Tours.