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Tours of museums and cathedrals
Guided visits to Italy's sights can help make them come alive, deepen your understanding, and enrich your experience
A guide in full character of Renaissance painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari gives an insider's tour of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence that takes you into portions of the medieval city hall that are off-limits to regular visitors.Whether led by learned volunteers, hired guides, a dusty professor, or a rotund old monk, a 30- to 120-minute tour of an individual sight can do the same thing for a cathedral or art gallery that walking tours do for a city.
Guides can spin stories and give insightful commentaries on the meanings of every tiny detail of a sight or painting, conjuring up the past and enriching the experience of your visit tenfold.
I'm not just trying to sell you a line here. I love sight tours. I've been led through the secret back rooms of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio by a costumed guide playing the role of Vasari (Renaissance painter, author, and Medici sycophant extraordinary; see the image to the left), and for 25 years have been entertained by a hilarious Filipino priest/guide in the Catacombs of San Domitilla outside Rome.
I toured the Roman Forum with an American professor of art history (for free), and learned from a docent at Milan's Pinacoteca Ambrosiana why Rubens' tiny, sketch-like preparatory paintings are far more interesting than his famous big ones (the master did the sketches himself; the big paintings were executed largely by his army of students and assistants based on the master's designs).
I've been shown the famous Red Wall behind which St. Peter himself was buried in a sub-sub-basement of the Vatican, and stood in the very cell from which Casanova escaped in "The Leads"—the attic prisons in Venice's Palazzo Ducale, which are inaccessible to the public except those on the "Secret itineraries" tour—listening to tales spun of the great lover and the fascinating justice system of the old Venetian Republic.
Do I need to book guided tours ahead of time?
You can often hop on the next guided tour at any museum, and some major sights, just by showing up, but there are two caveats here.
- Tours in English may be offered only at certain times and/or on certain days, so it pays to poke around the museum's Website (or call a few days ahead) to find this out.
- Reservations are essential for a few top-notch tours—like the indispensable "Secret Itineraries Tour" of the Doge's Palace in Venice—which can book up way in advance (as can entry to some sights that don't even come with a tour, just an admission ticket
).
You can also choose to book some of the most popular tours ahead of time via a site like our partner Viator. Here are some of their sight tours in major Italian destinations:
- Rome
- Florence
- Venice
- Milan
- Naples, Pompeii, Amalfi Coast
Related pages
- Private guides
- Guided tours of Italy (as in the entire vacation is a guided tour)
- Sights you need to book ahead
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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.
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