Three cities everyone books. Then the coast nobody plans for.
Which Colosseum ticket puts you on the arena floor. What the Uffizi costs if you book the slot yourself. Whether Pompeii runs better out of Naples or Sorrento. Reviews of every tour you can book in Italy.
The Vatican, the Colosseum, the Uffizi, a gondola after six.
The four tickets a first Italian trip gets built around. What each one costs, and what the people who booked it say.
01The Vatican morningVatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance TicketThe Sistine ceiling on a timed entry ticket. Take the first slot of the day; by eleven the Gallery of Maps moves at a shuffle.
02Ancient Rome in one goColosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided TourColosseum, Palatine Hill and the Forum on a single guided circuit. The hill is the part people skip and regret from the plane home.
03Florence in an afternoonSkip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketBotticelli, Leonardo and the Tribuna on a timed Uffizi slot. Booked ahead it is a queue you simply never join.
04Venice after the day boatsGrand Canal Gondola Ride with App CommentaryThirty-five minutes off the Grand Canal into the narrow rii. Go late, when the excursion crowds have gone and the water lies flat.
The most-booked days out in Italy.
Every tour in Italy →More travellers take these than anything else in the country. Prices, timings and what you actually get once you are through the door.
1
Vatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance Ticket
Skip Rome’s Vatican ticket queue, explore ancient art and the Sistine Chapel at your pace, and add an optional multilingual audio guide.
From · $38
Read our review →
2
Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour with Optional Basilica
from $79
3
Colosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Guided Tour
from $78
4
Cathedral and Duomo’s Terraces Entrance Ticket
from $30
5
Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry Ticket
from $41
6
Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basilica Guided Tour
from $22
7
Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided Tour
from $52
8
Guided Tour of Colosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Hill
from $55
Rome, Florence and Venice first. Then the road south.
The imperial city, the Renaissance one, the one built on water, a town stopped mid-morning by a volcano, a corniche of cliff villages, and an island that behaves like a country. Six bases, and the best day out from each.
Rome: the ruins before eleven, the Vatican on another morning.
Everything in Rome →
Ancient Rome and the Vatican are two separate mornings and the city punishes anyone who tries to fold them into one. Walk the centro storico in the gap between, and eat as late as the Romans do.
Standard ticket, or down on the floor
The basic ticket puts you up on the tiers with the Forum and Palatine thrown in. The arena-floor add-on walks you out where the gladiators came up through the trapdoors, and the underground tour drops below that. Each is its own capped slot.
Sistine Chapel, and whether to add St Peter’s
The museums funnel everybody down the same corridors to the same chapel. The tours that carry on into the basilica from inside skip the security line out on the square, which in July is the entire argument for booking one.
The Pantheon, and the free city around it
The Pantheon charges admission now and the fast-track slot walks you straight under the portico. Everything around it stays free: Navona at breakfast, the Trevi crowds at midnight, the whole lattice of lanes in between.
In Italy the good afternoon usually finishes at a table.
Three ways to eat a city instead of looking at it. What it costs to sit down at each, and which town does that one best.
Venice empties at six. Book the hours either side of it.
The Doge’s Palace at opening and the lagoon islands after lunch belong to a different city than the one you see at noon, when the day boats own San Marco and the vaporetti run standing-room only.
Every Venetian day out →
Italy keeps its best rooms behind a timed slot.
The Sistine ceiling, the arena floor of the Colosseum, the Birth of Venus, a refectory wall in Milan that twenty-five people see at a time. Almost none of it can be bought at the door on the morning you turn up.
What a day in Italy actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay for it. A good number of the best Italian mornings come in under the price of the aperitivo afterwards.
Timed entry tickets, audio-guided sites, market mornings and the short hops out of the old centres.
The full-day standards: Pompeii with an archaeologist, Tuscany by minibus, the Amalfi run by boat.
Private guides, a boat with your name on it for the day, and the once-a-trip extravagance.
The Amalfi Coast is a road you drive once and a sea you keep going back to.
Thirteen hairpin miles between Sorrento and Amalfi, one lane wide in places, with every coach in Campania on it. The ferry covers the same run in forty minutes and from the only angle that flatters Positano. Base in Sorrento and let somebody else take the bends.
- 1Exclusive Capri Boat Tour and Optional Blue Grottofrom $143
- 2Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tastingfrom $114
- 3Capri Blue Grotto Small-Group Boat Day Tour From Sorrentofrom $131
Three things that happen nowhere but Italy.
Old stones and good lunches turn up all round the Mediterranean. A town stopped mid-morning by ash, a wall painting rationed by the quarter hour, and a boat rowed standing up with one oar do not.
Pompeii and Vesuvius
Vesuvius buried the town in a single morning in AD 79 and sealed everything under it: bread still in the ovens, election slogans painted on the walls, cart ruts worn into the paving stones. The crater above is a separate ticket and a forty-minute climb on loose grey gravel. Do the ruins first, while the stone is still cool enough to walk on.
- 1Entry Ticket and Guided Tour with an Archaeologist★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 19,459 reviews
- 2Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 12,360 reviews
- 3Small Group Tour with an Archaeologist★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 12,264 reviews
The Last Supper
Leonardo painted it onto a dry refectory wall in Milan rather than wet plaster, which is why it began flaking inside his own lifetime. Visits now run in climate-controlled batches of twenty-five for fifteen minutes each, and the release calendar opens in blocks months ahead. There is no walk-up queue to stand in.
- 1Da Vinci’s Last Supper Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 10,143 reviews
- 2Guided Walking Tour & Last Supper Visit with Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 5,409 reviews
- 3Milan’s Must See: Half-Day Tour of Last Supper, Duomo & La Scala★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 4,193 reviews
The gondola
Eight kinds of wood, a hull built asymmetrically so it holds a line under a single oar, and a fare set by the city rather than the man rowing it. The Grand Canal is the postcard; the narrow rii behind it are the reason to get in. The tariff rises after seven in the evening, and so does the light.
- 1Grand Canal Gondola Ride with App Commentary★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 18,908 reviews
- 2Grand Canal by Gondola with Live Commentary★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 13,681 reviews
- 3Venice Walking Tour and Gondola Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 3,630 reviews
Four Italian tickets that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast on the day. These four run on release calendars, capped slots and viewing windows measured in minutes.
- 01Da Vinci’s Last Supper Guided TourTwenty-five people at a time for fifteen minutes. The calendar opens in blocks and the good months are gone the week they appear.
- 02Borghese Gallery and Gardens Guided Small-Group TourThe gallery admits a fixed number every two hours and sells nothing at the door. The reservation is compulsory, not a suggestion.
- 03Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketTimed entry all year. On the first Sunday of the month, when the state museums are free, you pay in queue along the Piazzale instead.
- 04Florence Accademia Gallery Tour with Entrance Ticket IncludedOne statue, one room, and a corridor of unfinished Slaves leading up to it. Slots are capped and the room is quietest in the first hour of the day.
When the paving is too hot to stand on and half the city has gone to the beach.
Ferragosto empties the cities and shutters the family-run places for a fortnight, and the sun handles the rest by noon. Both problems have one answer: an early ticket, then somewhere with thick walls. A cellar, a kitchen, a gallery, a lunch that runs long.
Four rooms carry most of the Renaissance, and each one rations entry.
The Uffizi, the Accademia, the Borghese and a refectory in Milan. Small rooms, capped slots, and a queue outside for everybody who assumed otherwise.
By place — the lakes down to the islands
By kind of day — ruin, gallery, kitchen or boat
Rome, Florence, Venice, and the two days south nobody regrets adding.
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