Skip the Line: Florence Accademia and Uffizi Gallery Small Group Tour

Loved the small group environment! My husband and I learned so much from our guide Ivan! We had a great time and definitely recommend.

Seeing the suffixing was very enjoyable. Our tour guide was very professional, friendly, and knowledgeable on the exhibits and local history. I would definitely recommend the tour to avoid long lines and to gain valuable insight into the unique exhibits.

This tour was amazing. The tour guide was thoroughly immersed in the history of the artifacts and paintings. Highly recommend.

One of the worst if not the worst tour we have ever done. Especially the morning tour of academia. It was supposed to be in English, but it was in English and French, which meant half the time we could not understand at all what the guy was saying. In addition when she attempted to speak English most of us could not understand a word. Our party and others, actually left the tour midway and continued the tour on our own. The afternoon tour Was better but not great. We felt that the tour guide was very disrespectful of the Christianity represented in the paintings. Almost feel like we should be given a refund for the tour.

Guided Tour was 1 hour, then you could be on your own. Enjoyed the tour and lunch was very good, we liked the restaurant. We didn’t go back to the 4 pm gallery tour as too long in between times. I felt it was expensive for what we got and knowing admission is only $12 normally and it wasn’t busy season. If it was high season would be worth the skip the line.

These were the best guided tours that I have been on. The guides were easily understood and their knowledge was excellent. They were very enthusiastic and energetic and kept me very interested in their information.

Our tour guide was fantastic and engaging. We did the tour that included a traditional Tuscan lunch and it didn't disappoint. It was delicious authentic Italian fare. The first part of the tour which included a the Galleria Dell'Accademia to see Michelangelo's "David" was the best part. Our tour guide gave us great information on the history surrounding the Renaissance era. This was the highlight of my vacation.

Great tour guides, one in particular engaged us with her technique by asking the us questions and kept us all interested.

We had an awful experience with this tour. The morning portion of the tour got started 45 minutes late after waiting outside the gallery while they organized various groups. We signed up for an English small group tour but we in a group of aprox 18 English and non-English speaking people. The tour guide explained everything in both languages which took longer. The information from the guide was basic and not more than we would have had by reading the explanations or using the audio-guide service provided by the gallery. We elected not to partake in lunch with the group and ate elsewhere. When we arrived at the Uffizi gallery we 5 minutes late (our mistake, we had difficulty finding the location). We did not see the group. We asked at the door and were told that the group had “just gone in”. We tried to call the customer service number to let them know we were there. The woman that answered was very rude and hung up on me while I was explaining the situation. I tried calling again and she immediately hung up. We then purchased our own tickets and thought we could just catch up to the group. We found them shorty beyond the entrance and explained to the guide that we had purchased this tour. She told us that we “could not join the group, it was not possible.” At first she said it was because the group was already at maximum capacity of 14 people, but when I asked her how we could have been on the reservation list but not included in the number she changed her story to say that she only had 2 headsets left so the three of us could not join. I asked her if we could get a refund and she told me to call customer service (I’ll probably get hung up on again). What a waste of money! The other Viator tours we have booked have been mediocre, at best. Interestingly we took and AirBnB tour of Siena that was FABULOUS! The guide had previously worked for Viator and told us their treatment of the guides is not any better than their customer service. I will not book tours through them in the future.

My wife and I had done two private tours on our trip and decided to take a more budget-friendly approach for this one. While it's definitely not the same as hiring a guide for yourself, this was still a decent value. The little headset things work pretty well and our guides were knowledgeable (Martina for Accademia, and I forget our Uffizi guide). The obvious downside is that it's a larger group so getting up close to get a good view of something can be a pain, and asking questions is a little awkward especially since the guides are on a timeline. All in all, if you want to save a few bucks and just get the general tourist overview, this is a fine tour. I'd personally rather hire a private guide though.