Vatican City Tours options for September, are we to late!

How much are you willing to spend? While tickets aren't available on the official site, Viator does have tickets for @ $130 per person. I have used Viator several times and while more expensive, the tours were well done and I could cancel, as I had to one time, just a day or two ahead. Good luck to you.

Just checked out the Viator website, they have dates available for a tour the day before we leave Rome. Fantastic! I also saw a few day tours we could go on, while we are in Florence. Trying not to over book with to many tours however it seems like we might miss so much if we don't. Thanks for the recommendation.

Viator is not the tour operator…they are simply the booking middleman between the customer and the actual tour company. Many tour companies work through Viator…some good…some not so great.
You can also wait until 60 days before and purchase a guided tour through the official Vatican Museums website. Right now, they show “not bookable” for your dates, but they usually become available 60 days before.

Interesting, I will see if I can figure that out.
Thank you

Book with the actual tour operator ( Viator is just the middle man)

Try
Walks of Italy
Tour Guy
Through Eternity

Thank you again, i will research the 3 tour groups tonight.
So bummed I didn't act fast enough to buy tickets, lesson learned.

As stated above, it appears the Vatican Museums' own tours are not yet bookable for late September, so there seems no need to pay a great deal more money for a commercial tour. Although plain entry tickets may be sold out, tour tickets are not sold out on the MuseiVaticani webste for September 17, so I assume tour tickets for the dates of your visit will be bookable very soon.

acraven is correct! You can purchase guided tours through the Vatican Museum’s own website…there is no need to use an outside company. The guided tours through the Vatican Museum are bookable 60 days in advance and usually are available even when the general admission tickets are sold out.
Lindy…” If you want to go, you will have to do so with any of the tour operators suggested here or Viator.”
Not true…you can book a guided tour through the official Vatican Museum website…no need to use an outside company. Tickets for the guided tours are usually available even when the general admission tickets are sold out, if you check 60 days in advance.

Wonderful! Just looked on the official website and figured out how to book a tour, of course with the help of this forum. Decided to book for 9/23, that gives me time to review the tours, and then wait until 7/23 when the booking opens for that date.
Thanks again the insight of this forum has be so helpful.

Such a timely topic for me as I will be visiting Rome on the 2nd week of September. Sadly, I also left things til the last minute. UGH...Today, I'll handle train tickets and museum/tours. I had no idea it would be so challenging. Finding hotels within our budget was also a tough job but got all nights taken care of. Sigh of relief! Thanks for bringing up this issue. Have a wonderful trip! Maria

Just want to say thanks again to the group. I was able to purchase the 9/23 Vatican Tour tickets on the Vatican website this morning. So much easier than expected, baby steps for this newbie LOL. Now to buy the Colosseum underground tickets. I have to wait until 30 days before date of visit, I've been watching the site, they go fast. Thanks again

Lauren…so glad it worked out for you and that you were able to get your tour tickets directly from the official Vatican website.

Me too! Wish me luck with the Colosseum tickets, I will need to be up late into the night or up pretty early to get those.

The Coliseum tickets will be tricky if you are looking to tour the Underground…but I wish you good luck! We have gone on both the Underground tour and the Attic tour (called the Belvedere level when we took that tour in 2017)…I much preferred the Attic tour for the amazing views. So, if by chance you do not get the Underground tickets, do try for the Attic tickets if they are available.

Great advice! Soon I will be able to purchase.

Lauren, just echoing jconsol's very good advice here!
In my humble opinion, the underground isn't the do-all-end-all of the Colosseum. You can clearly see down into the areas that are uncovered by the arena floor - which only hides about 1/4 of the space - from umpty vantage points above it. The amount of FOMO stress I see people putting themselves through to try and land tickets for down-under could easily be assuaged by booking a different option, such as jconsol's recommendation for the attic. It'll be interesting however you manage to do it.

So please don't stress about getting your first choice, OK? You did really well to land your Vatican tour (YAY!) and you'll have a wonderful time in Rome regardless if you can't access one teenytiny piece of all the fascinating stuff the city has to offer. :O)

Another bit of great advice! We will do our best to not get caught up in the scheduling and sit down in a piazza and take in the moments and wonderful history around us. The attic views in the colosseum look beautiful, going to try for those. Thanks again.

A while ago, I had determined, correctly or incorrectly, that tickets for the Underground of the Colosseum were a real crap shoot. I envisioned that tour groups, such as The Roman Guy, were on those tickets like white on rice, so I decided to buy the tour with them because what were my chances against the tour groups? I did read the fine print only to see that the time that I had chosen, 3:30, could be switched out for another time, e.g., 8:00 a.m. our first full day after the red eye to Rome (we would have been basket cases). I emailed them and received this response:
"This is a very popular tour that I hope you get to attend!
So as it states on the web site the Privileged Entrance Colosseum Tour with Roman Forum & Palatine Hill is a non-refundable tour. And it's important to note that it also says the start time of your tour is likely to change. Please keep your day open. Your final start time will be sent 5 days before the date of your tour.
You would still be able to take the tour (if you were unable to get tickets to the Underground). You would be placed on the next most exclusive tour depending on the availability. Floor could be a potential substitution. It can be early as 8AM and as late as 3:30PM, it just depends on the tickets we can secure."
I appreciated their honesty and quick responses to my emails. In the end, we didn't go with that tour because we didn't want to leave an entire day open to a possible changed time and/or substitution of what we would see. The fact that we wouldn't know until 5 days before solidified our decision.

Just in case some of you decide to go with a tour group (The Roman Guy is recommended by RS), read the fine print and email them if you have questions. They were very responsive.

I can not express enough how much I have enjoyed and benefited from this forum. I will look closely to my options. I do know we plan on spending two days in the Colosseum and Roman Forum area, so hoping this helps with options. Definitely trying for the Attic tickets. Do we really need the tour or it the RS audio good enough.

Definitely trying for the Attic tickets. Do we really need the tour or
it the RS audio good enough

.Lauren, the Attic ticket is not a guided tour, and they don't offer a guided tour which includes it. I don't know as the RS audio includes anything about that level and I think it's really all about the view anyway. You may want your RS audio for the other levels you're allowed access to.

I do know we plan on spending two days in the Colosseum and Roman
Forum area,

I'm assuming this means that, should you be able to land the 2-day attic ticket, you'll visit the Colosseum on the appointed day and the Forum/Palatine on the next? Neither of these things will occupy an entire day so you'll have lots of time for additional sightseeing. Are you planning to do that, and have some idea of what you want to see? Does your Vatican tour fall on one of these two days?

We will see the Vatican on Monday, 11am tour is scheduled, leaving the rest of the open, it will be our last before we head home. The Colosseum and Roman Forum area will be on Saturday and Sunday. This will leave part of Saturday and Sunday for exploring things close by. We will be staying in the Monti area, so hopefully we can do most on foot. Maybe the Jewish Ghetto walk if not to far away, I will have to check the map.

If not yet shown above-- Here, pre our RS Rome in 7 days itinerary, is the Vatican official website https://tickets.museivaticani.va/

I got tix today (31 July) for 17 Sept 13:30 25 Euros each. ab

Thanks, got our Vatican tickets from Vatican website and good info about pricey tours.

We just got our tickets for our 17 September visit a couple of days ago. This thread was very helpful. I had assumed that they were sold out...just not available until X number of days ahead of time. Also snagged Colosseum tickets for a second day.

My experience with Viator for the Vatican/St Peter’s/Sistine Chapel
was not an especially positive one. I believe they were woefully
overpriced and intended to victimize travelers such as yourself making
late plans, and made no mention of the fact that a major attraction
(The Pieta) was not available for viewing at the time which was both a
surprise and huge disappointment (nor was there any price offset for
this omission).

So sorry for your disappointment.
The thing is, Viator didn't conduct your tour. They don't conduct ANY tours. They are a 3rd-party consolidator for companies which do operate tours. It's up to the purchaser to investigate the quality of the company they actually book with. Those are almost always shown within the Viator selection either under the main heading for the product, or under "Additional Information", as it is for this example (click "see 7 more"for full dropdown.)

https://www.viator.com/tours/Rome/Skip-the-Line-Vatican-Museums-and-Sistine-Chapel-Guided-Tour/d511-3731VATICAN

You'll see that the tour operator for this one is City Wonders Ltd. If you know who will be conducting the tour, you can usually go to their OWN website for booking and skip the middle guy altogether.

While I don't use Viator myself, I'll kindly disagree that they're in the business of victimizing travelers as there are a choice of options at a range of prices to choose from. I'm also not clear on exactly what was deceptive about their advertising? If they'd promised the basilica but couldn't have accessed it at all, that's one thing but with quite a lot in Rome undergoing well-advertised restoration/construction for upcoming Jubilee, I wouldn't have expected a discount nor a cancellation for Pieta not being on view, as the basilica's website had announced back in May.

https://www.basilicasanpietro.va/en/news/2024/renewal-works-of-the-protective-glass-of-michelangelo-s-pieta.html

I do hope you found some other parts of your Vatican visit to enjoy!