Half of Italy sells out by March. Here is what to book first.
Which Colosseum ticket actually gets you onto the arena floor. What a Sistine Chapel entry costs before a guide adds to it. Whether the Uffizi is worth a whole morning. Reviews of every tour and ticket you can book in Italy.
From ·$19
Sistine Chapel, Colosseum, Uffizi, a gondola. The four Italy sells hardest.
Every first trip is built around these. What each one costs, how far ahead it goes, and what the people who booked it came back saying.
01The Vatican morningVatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance TicketEntry to the museums and the Sistine Chapel on a timed slot. Take the first hour of the day, before the corridors fill and the Gallery of Maps becomes a queue.
02Ancient RomeColosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided TourColosseum, Palatine Hill and the Forum on one guided walk. The Forum is rubble without someone to tell you which rubble mattered.
03The Florence morningSkip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketTimed entry to the Uffizi. Book a slot before ten and you get Botticelli almost to yourself; turn up without one and you do not get in at all.
04The Venice hourGrand Canal Gondola Ride with App CommentaryThirty minutes on the Grand Canal by gondola. Ruinously touristy, entirely worth it, and cheaper shared than you think.
Nearly every famous thing in Italy runs on a timed slot now.
Plain entry, skip-the-line, or a guide who explains what you are looking at. Three ways through the same door, what each one costs, and where the difference is actually worth paying.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Vatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance Ticket
Colosseum and the ForumArena floor and underground need the guided version.
Vatican MuseumsThe Sistine Chapel sits at the end of a two-hour corridor.
The UffiziTimed entry only. No slot, no Botticelli.
Doge's PalaceReserved entry, and the Bridge of Sighs from inside.
All 275 tickets and guided entries →
Rome, Florence, Venice, and the four places worth the extra train.
The three cities everyone does first, the hill country between two of them, a coastline built on a cliff, and an island that runs on volcanic soil. Six starting points, and the day out that earns its price in each.
Rome: the ruins before the heat, the Vatican before the crowd.
All of Rome, reviewed →
Two thousand years of masonry, one small country of art, and a dinner culture that does not start until you have given up. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
Standard entry, or down on the floor
A plain ticket puts you on the tiers looking down. The arena-floor and underground versions only come with a guide, cost roughly double, and are the ones that sell out a fortnight ahead.
Sistine Chapel, and the two hours before it
The chapel is at the far end of the museums, so you walk the Gallery of Maps and the Raphael Rooms to reach it either way. Book the earliest entry and the whole route is bearable.
Testaccio market, then Trastevere
Through the market stalls while they are still trading, then over the river for carbonara made the Roman way and a queue outside the gelateria that is worth standing in.
The Italian days out that book fastest.
Every Italian tour we have reviewed →These are the ones a booking page shows as almost gone by Thursday. Each holds its place for a different reason.
1
Vatican: Museums & Sistine Chapel Entrance Ticket
Enter the Vatican Museums at your reserved time, bypass the main ticket queue, and explore ancient sculpture, the Gallery of Maps, Raphael Rooms, Borgia Apartments, and the Sistine Chapel. This is an independent visit, not a guided tour. Add an audio guide in your language, and allow at least three hours, preferably more.
From · $38
Read our review →
2
Colosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Guided Tour
from $78
3
Cathedral and Duomo’s Terraces Entrance Ticket
from $30
4
Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry Ticket
from $41
5
Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry Ticket
from $30
6
Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Winery
from $114
7
Pantheon Fast-Track Ticket and Official Audio Guide
from $6
8
Entry Ticket and Guided Tour with an Archaeologist
from $35
Market mornings, pasta by hand, and a cellar in the Chianti hills.
Booking a meal is not the point. Book the walk through the market before the heat, the class that ends by eating what you made, and the tasting that finally explains why Sangiovese costs what it costs.
Three coastlines, two big lakes, and the islands off both ends.
The Amalfi cliffs only make sense from below them. Capri hides its best cave behind a gap you enter lying down, Sardinia keeps water the colour of a swimming pool, and the Como ferries run past villas you will never otherwise see.
Venice empties at six. That is the city worth staying for.
The day trippers come off the cruise ships, walk the Rialto to St Mark’s and leave again. Everything good is either early, late, or on a boat out to the lagoon islands where the glass is still blown by hand.
Every Venetian day out →
Tuscany is a day trip that keeps turning into a week.
Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa fit into one long day out of Florence, and most people do exactly that. The Chianti hills between them reward the opposite approach: one cellar, one long lunch, and nowhere else to be.
- 1Tuscany Day Trip from Florence: Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lunch at a Wineryfrom $114
- 2Reserved Entrance to Leaning Tower of Pisa & Cathedralfrom $28
- 3Da Vinci’s Last Supper Guided Tourfrom $75
What a day in Italy actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A surprising number of the best ones cost less than the coffee-and-cover charge on the piazza outside.
Entry tickets, audio-guided walks, a gondola shared four ways and most of the market mornings.
The full days: Tuscany with a winery lunch, Pompeii with an archaeologist, the Amalfi coast by boat.
Private guides, small-group access after closing, and the once-a-trip splurge that earns it.
Three things Italy has and nowhere else does.
Old towns and good dinners exist all over Europe. A city stopped mid-morning by a volcano, a furnace that has run on the same island since 1291, and an opera house audience that boos do not.
Pompeii and Vesuvius
Twenty thousand people lived here until the mountain took an afternoon off in 79 AD. What survives is not ruins in the usual sense but streets, with wheel ruts in the paving, election slogans on the walls and bread still in the ovens. Vesuvius itself is an hour above the site and you can walk to the lip of the crater.
- 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
Italian opera houses
Opera was invented in Florence and perfected in Milan, and an Italian audience still treats a bad high note as a matter of public concern. La Fenice, La Scala and the Verona arena all sell tickets to visitors; the arena seats twenty thousand on stone steps under an open sky, and you rent a cushion at the gate.
- 1La Fenice Opera House Entry Ticket with Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 11,742 reviews
- 2Santa Monaca Church Italian Opera Concert Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,692 reviews
- 3Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Live Classical Music Concert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,524 reviews
Four Italian bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be sorted out over breakfast on the day. These four run on fifteen-minute slots, standing reservations and gates that close whether or not you have arrived.
- 01Da Vinci’s Last Supper Guided TourTwenty-five people are let in every fifteen minutes and not one more. Slots go months out, and there is no queue to stand in instead.
- 02Borghese Gallery and Gardens Guided Small-Group TourThe gallery admits a fixed number every two hours and holds nothing back for walk-ups. Miss the slot and the next one is not today.
- 03Skip-The-Line Uffizi Gallery Timed Entry TicketTimed entry only. Without a reservation you do not join a slower queue, you simply do not get in.
- 04Exclusive Capri Boat Tour and Optional Blue GrottoThe cave is entered lying flat in a rowing boat, and it closes the moment the swell picks up. Book the morning and keep the afternoon spare.
When the cities empty out and the pavement is too hot to stand on.
August does two things to Italy. The middle of the day makes any open ruin unbearable, and around Ferragosto half the family-run places shut and go to the coast. Both have the same answer: be out early, then be indoors. Galleries, kitchens, cellars, and something with a roof after two.
By place — cities, coast and islands
By kind of day — gallery, kitchen, boat or road
Rome, Florence, Venice: the triangle almost everybody does first.
PompeiiJust reviewed, just added.
See what else landed this week →
Boat excursion to Gaeta with a stop for swimming and snorkeling 2 HOURS
Read our review →
Wine Tasting Experience in Ponte Vecchio: Best Tuscany selection!
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Florence Sunset Food Tour with Wine & Dine at a Tuscan farmhouse
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Walking Food Tour of Florence with Tastings and Wine
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Val d’Orcia Brunello Wine Tour with Montalcino and Montepulciano
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Florence Accademia Guided Tour – Shared, Private & Combo Options
Read our review →
Early Access Guided Uffizi Gallery Tour Skip-the-Line Small Group
Read our review →
Tuscany Vespa Tour from Florence with Wine Tasting
Read our review →
Tuscany Vespa Tours Through the Hills of Chianti
Read our review →