Viator Viator Travel Blog

Editor’s Note: Recently one of our contributors (who has asked to remain anonymous) needed some money. Originally from London but living in Rome, he decided to get a job as a tour guide in Rome. He ended up working with one of the dozen of companies that specialize in hard-sell Vatican tours (street hustle, large groups, uninspired staff, mediocre experiences).

Unfortunately we know some of the experiences described below are what give “guided Vatican tours” a bad name. And we wish it were otherwise. It is frustrating for a company such as Viator, since we only work with reputable tour operators in Rome and do everything possible - such as offering skip-the-line tickets to the Vatican and Colosseum, small group and private Vatican tours, and private viewings of the Sistine Chapel - to ensure our travelers avoid the pitfalls described.

The moral of the story: Obviously we’re biased in our own favor - we think our Vatican tours are the industry standard. But even if you don’t book your Vatican tours through Viator, you owe it to yourself to book ahead with a reputable company. It’s as simple as that.

Personally I have rarely been tempted to take guided tours. The times I have were usually accidental; faced with some complicated monument in the depths of India, an ageing guide has approached me and very softly urged me to take a tour at a wonderfully reasonable price. Or perhaps some 10-year old boy has repeatedly insisted on guiding me through the medina, in somewhere like Morocco, with such dogged determination that I have simply agreed because the heat and his poverty have simply worn me down.

These are the sort of guided tours that possess a little travel exoticism. But I recently had a rare insight into the big business industrial tours of Rome, the Vatican and its huge museum.

Vatican tours - which one?

I learn the hard sell

In order to earn some money I recently became involved in a small (nameless) company dealing with tours. I was interested in becoming a guide. And in order to get in with them I needed, at first, to spend some time selling the tours on the street.

Some days we would be at the Colosseum and others at the Vatican. It involved trying to dissuade as many tourists as possible not to attempt the Colosseum or the Vatican on their own but, instead, to join a specially tailored tour with audio mics and English-speaking tour guides. Many tourists were already absorbed into huge groups led by their determined guide, usually sporting an elongated radio aerial with as distinctive and brightly coloured piece of cloth tied to the top: black with pink spots or fluorescent yellow or simply a bright umbrella held aloft. When their group might collide with another two or three and get all mixed up like some strange racial cocktail, the poor lost souls could simply aim for their specific wand. I never really thought these were very necessary until I joined the tour of the company I worked for into the depths of the Basilica of St. Peters. In the scrum of the Vatican the distinctive coloured cloth is your only hope of survival.

I learn another painful lesson

Meanwhile out on the street I got the distinct impression that the more pretty and feminine you were the more successful you were at bringing in a healthy haul of tourists for the days tours. I was not doing very well (I am neither pretty nor feminine) but, anyway, was more interested in the guiding part.

In order to learn the ropes I was going to have to follow the guides and take notes. It did, in fact, amaze me that people take these tours. Essentially the whole business was run from the street, we could have been anybody but the truth was it was bona fide, and the organisers genuinely worked hard to produce a full and professional tour of the Colosseum and the Vatican.

But there was always a moment right at the beginning in the Vatican that the whole group would be led to some back street bar to be handed out their radio mics and before the mics appeared a strong feeling of distrust came up from some of them as they wondered if they had just been led into some dreadful con. The truth I suspect is that it would be stupid to con anybody because there is far more money to be made being straight up. And despite it all looking fairly spontaneous, the patches are tightly controlled by various syndicates who protect their various street locations like lions.

Vatican tours the hard way

So what were the advantages to these tours? That is perhaps the biggest turn off of the tour – the look. It is not cool. It never looks good from the outside and as a lone visitor there was always something destructive about having ones quiet moment trampled by an information-addicted rabble. Ah yes the advantages. Well, at the Colosseum depending on the time of the day, particularly the morning there are the queues and at the Vatican there are also the queues which can do a full circle of the square. Some group tours have the distinct advantage of skipping these nasty queues.

Inside the Vatican is at times like being in an overcrowded railway station, especially when you near the Sistine chapel. I can imagine that for a couple or single tourist the mob might just overwhelm you so I really think it could be better to join them and be in your own little tour guided mob – organised and on a mission.

Of course not all guides make interesting listening and I found that it was the newest guides that I followed – recently begun for the summer, that were excited and passionate and this is a life saver. Because some guides, even the licensed ones, can really drone on so that one is fed a constant gray noise, spilling out information like a dark drizzly day on the ear.

Vatican tours the better way

Of course luck is involved and planning, I followed one friend who has been in the business for 10 years. She does not get her clients from the street but is sought out through recommendations and a large network of contacts. To follow her around with a small group of eight was a dream, still exhausted by the end but treated to a layered history of the Vatican which intertwined themes of Papal power, spiritual and sovereign with the intrigues of Michelangelo, Raphael and Bramante (the architect of the most recent St.Peters).

You see I sound like a know what I’m talking about so I suppose the tours do work. But her tours wove the objects into anecdotal stories and themes creating layers of meaning to the whole vast art work that the Vatican is.

The one unfortunate thing to the Vatican museum (whether you are on a tour or not) is that the colourful and surreal Sistine chapel is arrived at last. Just when you are thoroughly worn out and have overdosed on imagery. It is also usually utterly packed to overflowing with people all staring upwards at Michelangelo’s version of the creation of the world. At the same time stewards try to stop people taking pictures (the Sistine is under copyright) and talking. It is meant to be a place of silence – a goal that would need more than a few prayers to achieve.

-Anonymous

Planning a trip? Browse Viator’s Rome tours including top-rated Vatican tours where you can skip the lines altogether. Or read more about Rome right here on the Viator Blog.