Christian Rome Tour Semi-Private

Our Tour Guide was excellent. She was very knowledgeable. There were only four of us on the tour and we are family members. I appreciate Viator accommodating us when I requested a shorter tour due to time constraints as to when we had to meet our Trafalgar Tour at the hotel. The three basilicas we saw were very beautiful and impressive. (We had to omit one basilicas the reason above and we were going to see St. Peter's the next day anyway.) Our driver was also excellent and very friendly. I highly recommend this tour

Started with confusion on hotel pick up - we were waiting at front of hotel, don’t know where the guide was waiting. The guide (female, already forgot her name) seemed unorganized and did not fully plan ahead. We were grateful that we were the only ones to sign up for this tour as we had the tour to ourselves. The driver seemed nice, and did his job of dropping us off and picking us up from each location. However, both the driver and guide seemed to disagree/argue in Italian frequently during our tours which was not very professional. Overall the guide seemed to pick the churches that did not have a fee (and therefore did not need to have a schedule or much of a plan). She also seemed to lack in Catholic and historic information, but was ok with knowledge of some architecture. We tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and be polite. First stop we visited St. Peter square only. Our guide said the lines were too long and our whole trip would be wasted waiting to get in (so why didn't she purchase advance tickets for us??). Visited Saint Paul outside the walls - beautiful church with lots of history but the guide basically let us go on our own. A quick tour of St. Basilica of St. John in the Lateran. When we arrived at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore we were too late to see it since it closed at 7 & we arrived 6:40 (the guards wouldn’t allow in since they closed in 20 minutes). Maybe not entirely our guides fault but the timing should have been planned better. We did get to go across the street to St. Lawrence to see the Holy Stairs, but again we went inside without the guide. The guide wanted to find another church to tour (to make up for the ones we couldn’t see?) but by that time we were tired and just wanted to return to our hotel. Perhaps with a different guide or a more definitive plan, the tour would have been satisfactory.

This was the most wonderful tour. The extraordinarily knowledgeable young woman who ran the tour covered, art, history and theology and was such a delight. She has been studying archeology for a long time and it showed. She also gave us tips about getting around the city and what to look out for. As the tour is recently new on viator I was unsure what to expect but it exceeded our expectations and was one of the best if not the best Roman tour we took. We had our own driver as there was only the two us booked and he was also very accommodating and pleasant. Apparently they never take more that eight as they like to ensure you have their full attention. The car/van was spotless and the air conditioning was a treat in the Roman heat. Thank you so much, you made the start of our holiday very special. Wow, wow and wow! Kerry and Harry Williams

This was our favorite tour. Both the guide and driver were fantastic. If you like visiting very old churches and enjoy factual information take this one. Another great perk-- they pick you up at your hotel! No running around trying to find meeting places!