See it at your own speed, with somebody good talking in your ear.
Which app still works with no signal inside the Basilica Cistern. Whether the Colosseum commentary earns its money next to a live guide. What the Vatican hands you at the door and what you should have downloaded before you got there. Reviews of the audio guides and self-guided tours you can book.
Four audio tours that explain why people stopped hiring guides.
A basilica, a temple, one statue and a boat. What each costs, how long it runs, and what people say once they have taken the headphones off.
- 01The one everybody booksSagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideGaudí’s glass changes colour across the day and the commentary tells you where to stand for it. Take a morning slot, while the east windows are still doing the work.
02The cheap thrillPantheon Fast-Track Ticket and Official AudioguideA few dollars to understand a building you can walk into for nothing. The explanation of the oculus is worth the download on its own.
03The one-room visitTimed Entry to Michelangelo’s David + Audio AppOne statue, one timed slot, about forty minutes of why it matters. You are out again before the Uffizi queue has moved.
04The sit-down option75 Minute City Canal Cruise with Audio GuideSeventy-five minutes of canal with the commentary doing all the work. Book it for the afternoon your legs give up.
Italy hands out more audio guides than anywhere else. Three ways to spend one.
Nearly every ticket in the country now arrives with an app attached, which is why the self-guided habit tends to start here. Pick the city and the kind of day that goes with it.
Six cities that reward wandering off with your own commentary.
A forum, a museum mile, two domes, a harbour and a canal ring. Each of them hands you a set of headphones at the gate, and each of them has one guide worth more than the rest.
Rome: the stones stay silent until something explains them.
Everything in Rome →
Half of ancient Rome is now a field of foundations, and the other half is a church built on top of one. A guide in your ear is the difference between a walk and an afternoon you remember. These three carry more people than anything else in the city.
The Forum, put back together
The Forum reads as rubble until the commentary walks you along the Sacred Way and names each pile. Go early: there is no shade in there and the app keeps talking whether or not you are still standing.
St Peter’s, without the guided crowd
Entry costs nothing and the queue is security, not tickets. The guide is what turns a very large room into four hundred years of argument about how to hold a roof up.
The Vatican rooms, at your own pace
The galleries run for kilometres before the Sistine Chapel and most people sprint them. The commentary is the only thing that makes the map rooms and the tapestries worth slowing down for.
The audio guide was invented for rooms like these.
A painted ceiling gives nothing away from the floor, and a nave is too big to read a label in. This is where the handset earns its money: somebody pointing at the right corner at the right moment, at a volume only you can hear.
The audio tours the most people press play on.
Every audio tour we have reviewed →Cathedrals, canal boats and one very famous statue. These are the guides that fill up first, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
Enter the Sagrada Familia at your booked time and explore Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished basilica with a downloadable audio guide on your phone. Study the Gothic and Art Nouveau details, stained glass, museum, and work still under construction. Tower access to the Passion or Nativity Facade is available only with selected ticket options and may close in poor weather.
From · $39
Read our review →
2
Pantheon Fast-Track Ticket and Official Audioguide
from $5
3
Casa Batlló Entry with Self-Audioguide Tour
from $34
4
Colosseum & Forum with Audio Guide App -Optional Arena
from $41
5
75 Minute City Canal Cruise with Audio Guide
from $18
6
Timed Entry to Michelangelo’s David + Audio App
from $33
7
City Centre Canal Cruise including Audioguide
from $17
8
City Sightseeing Hop-on Hop-off Bus with Audioguide
from $15
Paris keeps its best rooms behind its longest queues.
The Louvre is too big to attack without a plan and the Orsay is too good to rush. Both hand you a guide, both let you skip the group, and the river commentary after dark is the cheapest hour in the city.
Every Paris audio tour →
Self-guided means nobody waits for the slow walker, including you.
No umbrella to follow, no eleven o’clock start, no standing at the back straining to hear. You download the route, you stop when something is worth stopping for, and you finish when you are finished.
What an audio tour actually costs.
Every guide on the site, grouped by price. A surprising number of the best ones cost less than the coffee you drink afterwards.
App routes, cathedral handsets, old-town walks and most single-site commentaries.
The big-ticket rooms: timed museum entry, palace complexes and canal boats with the guide included.
Combined passes, stadium and harbour days, and the long routes that fill a whole afternoon.
Four audio tours that run on a clock, not on your plans.
Most of this you can arrange from a café table the morning of. These four are capped by the half hour, and the times that suit you go first.
- 01Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideEntry runs in fifteen-minute bands with a hard cap on each one. The morning slots, the ones the east windows are built for, sell out first.
- 02Borghese Gallery Skip-the-Line Ticket & AudioguideThe gallery admits a fixed number of people for a fixed two hours, then clears the building. There is no turning up and waiting.
- 03Alhambra Entry Ticket with Audio GuideThe Nasrid Palaces have their own half-hour entry time printed on the ticket, separate from the rest of the site. Miss it and it is not honoured.
- 04Uffizi Priority Ticket & Masterpieces Audio AppTimed entry, and the queue for same-day tickets regularly outlasts the afternoon you wanted to spend inside.
Charge it, download it, and bring your own headphones.
Audio tours fail for four reasons and all four are fixable in a hotel lobby. The app wants downloading on wifi. The route wants two hours of battery. Half of these buildings have no signal inside. And plenty of tickets say audio guide when they mean a rented handset at a desk, sometimes with a deposit and a passport. Check which one you booked.
Three things a live guide cannot do for you.
A person at the front of a group has to move at one speed, speak one language and stay on the pavement. A recording has none of those problems.
Driving routes
These are built around GPS: the commentary fires as you pass the trailhead, the overlook, the turning nobody signposts. They run offline, which matters in canyon country where the signal dies at the park gate, and they let you stop for an hour at a viewpoint without holding up a coach.
- 1Gettysburg Battlefield Self-Guided Driving Audio Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 910 reviews
- 2Joshua Tree National Park Self-Guided Driving Audio Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 762 reviews
- 3Ultimate Acadia National Park Self-Guided Driving Audio Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 521 reviews
Scavenger hunts
Part walking route, part puzzle: the app sets a question about a doorway or a statue and will not move on until somebody works it out. They run on your own clock, they cover ground a walking tour skips, and they are the one format that reliably survives a teenager.
- 1Bruges Scavenger Hunt and Highlights Self Guided Audio Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 54 reviews
- 2Strasbourg Scavenger Hunt and Highlights Self-Guided Audio Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 42 reviews
- 3Lille Scavenger Hunt and Highlights Self Guided Audio Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 32 reviews
Multilingual guides
A live tour happens in whatever language filled the group. A handset does not: the same commentary comes in eight or ten, at the pace you set, with the option to hear the difficult bit twice. For anybody travelling outside their first language it is the difference between listening and following along.
- 1Acropolis Ticket with Multilingual Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 3.9 · 926 reviews
- 2Geiranger: Bus Tour with Multilingual Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 317 reviews
- 3Sightseeing Cruise on the Danube with Audio Guide in Budapest★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 229 reviews
Rome to Venice, with the commentary doing the walking tour.
Vatican City
Pompeii
NaplesThe guides that landed most recently.
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San Marino’s Three Towers: An Audio Tour of the Ancient Republic
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Talking Buildings of Old San Juan: A Self-Guided Audio Tour
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The Ghosts of San Francisco Haunted Audio App Walking Tour
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Point Reyes National Seashore Self Guided Driving Audio Tour
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