Rome takes three days. Italy takes longer.
Which Colosseum ticket puts you on the arena floor. What the Uffizi costs if you book it yourself. Whether Pompeii is better done from Naples or from Rome. Reviews of every tour you can book in Italy.
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- days out under $50
The one everybody booksVatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance TicketTimed entry to the Museums and the Sistine Chapel. Take the first slot: by ten the Gallery of Maps is shoulder to shoulder.from $38
The Colosseum, properlyColosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Guided TourOne ticket covers the arena, the Forum and the Palatine. A guide is the difference between rubble and a city.from $79
The day out of FlorenceTuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a WinerySiena, San Gimignano and Pisa in a day, with lunch in the Chianti hills. The one coach day worth taking.from $115
The coast roadSorrento, Positano and Amalfi Full-Day TourSorrento, Positano and Amalfi from Naples, on the road that hangs off the cliff. Somebody else drives it.from $108Rome sells its ruins one ticket at a time. Pick the right one.
The Colosseum, the Vatican and the basilica are three separate queues on three separate timetables, and nothing about that is obvious from home. Four kinds of Roman day, and what each one costs to walk into.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Colosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Guided Tour
The Colosseum and the ForumOne ticket, three sites, and the arena floor if you book it.
The Vatican MuseumsFour kilometres of gallery that end under the Sistine ceiling.
St Peter’s and the domeThe basilica costs nothing. The 551 steps to the cupola do.
The museums people missBorghese, the Capitoline, the Baths. Rome without the queue.
All 682 days out in Rome →
Six Italian cities, and the best day out from each.
Almost every Italian trip is built out of two or three of these. What each one is for, and what you would actually book once you were there.
Italy keeps its best mornings offshore.
The motor boat out to Murano and Burano, the Bellagio run on Lake Como, skiffs into the Blue Grotto on the days the sea allows it, and the Maddalena archipelago off northern Sardinia. Eight thousand kilometres of coast and a string of northern lakes, and the good part of both opens up from a hull.
What Italy actually books.
Every tour in Italy →The days out more travellers take than anything else in the country, with what each costs and how long it runs. The order is not an opinion.
1
Vatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance Ticket
Review of the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel ticket, with tips on entry times, crowds, audio guides, dress rules, and overall value.
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
Half of Italy is eaten, not looked at.
A pasta class that finishes as lunch, a Chianti cellar an hour south of Florence, and the fried street food of Naples and Palermo, which is its own argument for going. Book the market walk before the heat and the tasting after it.
Florence is a gallery with a city built round it.
The David and the Uffizi run on quarter-hour slots and sell out weeks ahead, which is the whole planning problem here. Everything else is walkable, and the hills behind the city hold the wine.
Every Florence day out →
Italy runs from a six-dollar Pantheon ticket to a private boat off Capri.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs a head. The cheap end is not the thin end here.
Timed tickets, audio guides, city walks and most of the museums. Two of Rome’s big three live down here.
Guided mornings at the Colosseum and the Vatican, cooking classes, Chianti afternoons and the Pompeii day out.
Private boats off Capri, the full coast road, Tuscany with a driver, and the once-a-trip splurges that earn it.
A ceiling in Rome, a wall in Milan, a town under ash near Naples.
Ruins and old masters turn up all over Europe. The Sistine ceiling, the Last Supper on a refectory wall, and a Roman town stopped mid-morning in AD 79 do not.
The Sistine Ceiling
Michelangelo spent four years on the scaffold and complained about it in verse. You reach the room at the end of four kilometres of galleries, and you are not supposed to talk once you are in it. Book the first slot of the morning if you want to hear how quiet it was meant to be.
- 1Vatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 144,003 reviews
- 2Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour with Optional Basilica★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 67,413 reviews
- 3Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basilica Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 39,149 reviews
The Last Supper
Twenty-five people, fifteen minutes, one refectory wall at Santa Maria delle Grazie. Leonardo painted it in a technique that began failing inside his own lifetime, which is why the air is controlled and the slots are rationed. They go months ahead and there is no 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
Pompeii and Herculaneum
Vesuvius buried both towns in AD 79 and preserved what it killed: bread still in the oven, election slogans painted on the walls, cart ruts worn into the paving. Herculaneum is smaller, deeper and better preserved. Pompeii is the one people mean.
- 1Pompeii: Entry Ticket and Guided Tour with an Archaeologist★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 19,459 reviews
- 2Pompeii: Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 12,360 reviews
- 3Pompeii: Small Group Tour with an Archaeologist★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 12,264 reviews
Four tickets Italy will not sell you at the door.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast on the day. These four run on timed slots and rationed numbers, and they are gone weeks before you land.
- 01Da Vinci’s Last Supper Guided TourTwenty-five people at a time, fifteen minutes each. Slots open months out and clear the same week.
- 02Vatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance TicketEntry is timed and capped. The early slots, the only cool ones, go first.
- 03Florence Accademia Gallery Tour with Entrance Ticket IncludedThe Accademia rations entry by the quarter hour, and it takes Mondays off.
- 04Exclusive Capri Boat Tour and Optional Blue GrottoThe cave only opens when the sea is flat and the tide is low. The boats stop at the first swell.
Italy shuts its galleries on Monday and the Vatican on Sunday.
Most state museums here take Monday off, and the Vatican Museums close on Sundays bar the last one of the month. Plan around it rather than into it: the Colosseum, the Forum and Pompeii open every day of the week, and so does anything with a hull under it.
By city, coast and island
By kind of day — ruin, gallery, kitchen or boat
Rome to Venice is four hours by train. Most first trips stop twice on the way.
The most recent Italian reviews.
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Tivoli Day Trip with Villa d’Este and Villa Adriana
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Skip the line Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour
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