Artviva The Original & Best Walking Tours

Day 1… OUTSTANDING tours by Kane and Kate. So knowledgeable about their subjects and city. Made it interesting and fun. Smaller tour groups, it appears, compared to others made us nimble and quick through the city. Kane’s recommendation about the gelato was right on… good call. And the sandwich place. We’re booked with them for two more days, and looking forward to what’s to come. Kane did the 3 hour walking tour, Kate did the Statue of David tour. Who knew a patsy came from a church murder (gotta take the tour to hear the full story). And as Kate said, the David almost looks like it will come to life at any moment. Excellent!!!

I can’t say enough good things about this company. Top notch– so glad we found them. We had a group of 10 so Artviva suggested we do a private tour. It ended up being a little cheaper and they personalized it just for us! We did the original Florence walk in the morning, took a break for lunch at the accademia restaurant (per our morning guide’s recommendation) and then did the Uffizi tour in the afternoon.
The morning started out with a walking tour of Florence led by Hilda. I liked how we were all given radio receivers and she spoke into the transmitter so we could hear everything clearly. Hilda was so knowledgeable about Florence– she was amazing! Then our morning tour ended up with the tour of Accedemia highlights by seeing Michalangelo’s «David».
After lunch we had Barbara show us around the Uffizi museum. Her enthusiasm was contagious. She was so excited to show us everything! One of our group members said he had a new appreciation for art after touring with Barbara because she told us all the details and the stories behind the paintings and the hidden meanings.
I highly recommend Artviva tours– we learned so much and really enjoyed our guides.

Artviva also arranges cooking classes. We decided on the luncheon program that met at noon at a kitchen across the Arno River.
Our Chef/​Instructor, Walter, was humorous, knowledgeable, patient, and helpful. He showed us how to make a baked eggplant appetizer, an absolutely delicious pasta and sauce dish, and an incredibly tasty dessert — tiramisu.
All kitchen tools needed, the food ingredients, the excellent instruction, the wine — hey, you can’t eat food in Italy without wine — and, yes, the eating of all of the food we made were included in the price: a great deal for well less than € 100 for both of us.
We came away after a couple of hours with some great cooking ideas, a compilation of the recipes we used as well as being so full we couldn’t eat dinner several hours later.
Great program … and Walter is a great Chef/​Instructor!

ArtViva and their wonderful tours helped make our trip to Italy unforgettable! Each guide we had on the five occasions was so knowledgable and friendly. I highly recommend you sign up for multiple things through this great company as doing so will greatly enhance your visit to Rome and Florence in terms of understanding the history of each site and allowing you to skip all of the long lines at the museums. Below you’ll find the name of the guides we had and the highlights of each tour.
«Masterpieces of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Tour»: Our guide Simone was a native Roman and led us on an extensive journey through the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica.
«The Original Rome Walk»: We met our tour guide, Gydo, at the Arch of Constantine and proceeded to get an in-​depth history lesson of The Coliseum, Palatine Hill, Forum Romanum, and Pantheon. Gydo was so kind as to treat us to a cold beverage at the conclusion of our epic tour!
«Uffizi Gallery and Vasari Corridor Tour»: Claus, an enthusiastic, knowledgeable guide (he was appropriately an art history major) from Amsterdam showed us and described the most famous art pieces in the Uffizi and then took us through the remarkable (and exclusive) Vasari Corridor.
«The Original David Tour»: Visit to the real statue of Michelangelo’s David at Galleria dell’Accademi. I unfortunately don’t remember the name of our guide but she was an incredible storyteller!
«The Best of Cinque Terre Day Trip Tour»: My mother and I met at the ArtViva office to catch the van (our driver Luigi was great) for our tour of Cinque Terre. We were guided by the warm and welcoming Florentinian, Alessandro, over the course of our day in the most beautiful coastal city. Our stomachs were as happy as our eyes: we stopped for a snack of focaccia, a pesto and seafood pasta lunch in Vernazza, and a glass of sciacchetra in Monterosso.

I looked like a tourist and didn’t even care. Corina gave us such an amazing tour of the Uffizi. I seriously could have listened to her talk about art all day. She was really passionate about the art that she showed us and her stories were really captivating. She also talked about the history of Florence while we walked to the museum. So interesting!
The cost of the tour includes admission to the museum and you get to skip the line. I recommend this tour to anybody visiting Florence.

My wife and I took a train to Firenze after visiting Roma. I usually like to plan things ahead of time, but we hadn’t booked any tours for the city prior to arriving. I’d been to Florence a couple times and figured we could get around well enough for the couple days we were planning on being there. Just in case, we asked some of our tour mates in Rome for recommendations, and ArtViva was widely and roundly lauded.
So when we arrived in Florence we decided to go for it and booked online. 99 Euros a person for three tours, including the cost of museum entries. Not bad. We did the Original Florence Walking Tour, Uffizi Gallery Tour, and the Accademia/​Michelangelo Tour.
On the Sunday morning that we were planning to do the tour, we walked over to their office and met Brenda and the rest of our group. She was a local but spoke perfect English, with a very mild accent. Over the next three hours she walked us all around the city center, stopping in several churches, markets, pointing out recommendations for lunch and gelato, and more. Great tour. She left us off outside the Duomo before lunch.
After lunch, we met up with Klaus and our next group for the Uffizi. Klaus explained that he was Dutch and had studied Art History in college. He had fallen in love with Florence and moved there several years ago. One of the other ArtViva employees went ahead to buy our group tickets so we wouldn’t have to wait in the crazy long line. We were then given one of the best art museum tours I’ve experienced, and I’ve been to a lot of art museums. Klaus must have given this tour hundreds of times, but is just as enthused as if it were his first.

I took the Uffizi Gallery tour with this company and my tour guide was great! She was good about telling us about the development of Renaissance art and threading a coherent narrative throughout the entire tour, along with the usual interesting trivia bits about the gallery and life back during that period, etc. etc.
As usual for Italy, they use these little headsets with short-​range transmitters so the tour guides don’t have to shout. Lovely technological solution, especially given the huge amounts of tour groups floating through the Uffizi. It would have been more tumultuous if the tour groups didn’t use them.
The tour guides have their own entrance to the Uffizi so it was quite lovely to skip the insane line.
Bathrooms: The Artviva offices (initial meeting point) do not have bathrooms, and nothing convenient nearby. If you have to go, I recommend asking the tour guide to go first in line at the museum and going to the restroom while everyone else is filing through the metal detectors, etc.

I booked the The Original Florence Walk and Masterpieces of the Uffizi Gallery Tour and found ArtViva’s tour guides to be very knowledgable and engaging. Florinda was our guide for the Florence Walk and the way she described the history of Florence was very engaging! (might be in part due to the fact that she is also an actress). It was fascinating how Florinda pointed out the various medieval and Renaissance architecture of Florence, while telling provocative stories about the city’s history.
Elisabetta was our guide for the Uffizi Gallery tour who was also quite humorous in a dry humor type of way. The earpieces were great to have as it meant we didn’t have to crowd around our guides during the tours. Highly recommend ArtViva, especially the Original Florence Walking Tour!

Did the Original Walking Tour of Florence. It was fantastic. Booked online ahead of time. Instructions were clear and easy to follow in the email. Everything was well organized. Our tour guide knew so much information about Florence, it was a real pleasure to be lead by such a professional. Of all the tours we have done throughout Italy, our guide had the least accent, which made it very easy for us to understand.

This company is GREAT. I booked the full Venice — Florence — Rome package. I’m so glad I did. I learned so much from these tours. The best tours were the walking tours. The Florence walking tour and the Rome walking tours were so good. My tour guide in Venice was Jennifer, and she was great. And in Rome, my guide was Simon and he was amazing!!! The walking tour I did with Simon in Rome was the highlight of my time in Rome. I also had a nice Vatican tour with guide Florinda. Our group only had three people in it for the Vatican, so it was nice and small and personal. I would recommend the company Art Viva to anyone traveling to Venice or Florence or Rome.

After having two very disappointing walking tours in Rome (Rome Walks and Enjoy Rome), I was ecstatic to have such a great tour in Florence with Laura. We took the original (intro) walking tour. Not only was Laura very knowledgeable, but she was an extremely good storyteller and her talks were well thought out. I must admit, it was also such a relief to have a native english speaker after two tour guides in rome that wehad to concentrate to understand. Many others (strangers) on the tour commented that they had taken some terrible tours elsewhere, but they were also thrilled with Laura’s tour.
Walking tours are truly my favorite thing to do in Europe. However, I learned that in Italy, it is a strenuous process to become a tour guide, requiring an Italian language exam and a year of coursework specific to the art, history, architecture, etc of the City/​region the guides are licensed in (OR a college degree in one of these humanities). While I certainly appreciated the breadth/​depth of knowledge of our Roman tour guides, they were not entertaining nor good storytellers. For a tourist new to a city, we appreciate both informative AND interesting stories rather than spouting of facts and dates.
Laura seemed to perfectly understand this. Thank you Artviva!

LOVED OUR TOURS IN FIRENZE!!!
Klaus and Florinda were the best tourguides I’ve had in my life (although I haven’t had many ;)) and I know so much more about Florence than I expected I would ever know. Klaus’s morning stroll of the Florence streets was incredibly educational. We were sold on returning the following day so enjoy a guided tour of the Uffizi and Academia with Florinda.
Both guides spoke great English and covered many interesting topics throughout our experiences. I highly recommend using ArtViva while visiting Florence – but if you plan to do all three guides, perhaps break it up into morning tour one day and 2 afternoon museum tours another day. It’s a lot to take in and you don’t want to miss any of it.