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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.
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.
You can choose to book tours of some of the more popular sight ahead of time via one of our partners:
You can also choose to book some of the most popular tours ahead of time via a site like our partners Viator or City-Discovery.com.
With a map showing bus routes and a bit of imagination, you can put together your own budget tour for the price of a standard public bus ticket. Most major cities have a commuter bus line that, either by design or default, happens to pass by many of the tourist highlights (like Rome's no. 64—and its express cousin no. 40—from the train station straight through the historic center to the Vatican area, or Rome's teensy electric buses no. 116, 117, and 119, each of which trundles a different path around the twisting streets of the historic center).
You have to provide your own commentary, of course, by being quick with a map and cross-referencing it to a guidebook (though if you have Internet access with a cell/palmtop, you can always following along using a ReidsItaly.com map, available in each major city section), and you'll end up missing out on most of the quirky anecdotes and hidden history. On the other hand, it's really, really cheap.
Each city section of this site will point you to the most useful public buses that make the rounds of the major tourist sights.
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This article was written by Reid Bramblett and was last updated in April 2015.
All information was accurate at the time.
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