Colosseum & Vatican Highlights Private Tour

This full-day 8 hour private tour combines the two halves of Rome most guests want to see in one visit: Vatican City and ancient Rome.

You are met at your hotel and driven directly to Vatican City, where VIP tickets reserved in advance let you skip the general admission line. The Vatican's museum complex holds one of the world's most significant collections of art and antiquities, and the Sistine Chapel is the highlight of any visit. You'll see Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes of the Creation, painted between 1508 and 1512 in his mid to late 30s, and the Last Judgment on the altar wall, which he returned to paint more than 20 years later in his 60s.

Next you walk to St. Peter's Basilica, decorated in High Renaissance and Baroque style with art in gold, marble, and mosaic. Your guide points out Michelangelo's Pieta, completed in his early 20s, and you can also visit the Vatican grottoes, home to the tombs of the popes and, behind a wall of glass, what is believed to be the tomb of St. Peter himself.

After visiting the Vatican, you have a lunch stop (not included) in Piazza Navona, a square shaped by several Baroque masterpieces, including Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, completed in 1651 and topped with an Egyptian obelisk. The square is lined with cafes and pizzerias.

The afternoon shifts to ancient Roman history, starting at the Colosseum, built under Emperor Vespasian starting around 70 AD and completed by his son Titus in 80 AD. At its height the arena had 76 numbered entrances, marble seating for around 50,000 spectators, retractable shade awnings, and subterranean passages where gladiators and animals waited before combats. Your guide accompanies you inside to explore its history firsthand.

Leaving the Colosseum, you pass the Arch of Constantine, dedicated in 315 AD to commemorate Constantine's defeat of Maxentius. Your guide leads you through the Roman Forum, the political, religious, and commercial center of Ancient Rome, before ending the walking tour at Capitoline Hill, the most sacred of Rome's seven hills. You climb the staircase designed by Michelangelo to the Piazza del Campidoglio, where a bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius stands at the center, with a view back over the Forum and the Colosseum rising in the distance.

At the end of the tour, you are taken back to your hotel.

• This tour is not available on Sundays or Holy Days, and VIP tickets require the names as shown on passports for each guest. Folding wheelchairs are welcome, though some sites may not be fully accessible. Please let us know in advance so we can plan accordingly. The Vatican enforces a dress code: no bare shoulders, no shorts, no dresses above the knee, and no bare feet or exposed midriffs.