Experiences across Italy
Small-group tours and tastings from operators we work with directly, in 8 Italian cities.
Villa Borghese Gardens & Pincio Terrace Walk
A calm morning in Rome's best-loved park, starting at the Temple of Aesculapius on the lake and winding through umbrella pines to the Pincio terrace above Piazza del Popolo. Your guide talks through how the Borghese family turned a vineyard into a private pleasure garden, points out the water clock and the aviary, and leaves plenty of room for coffee. It is a gentle route with benches and shade, and it suits families and slower walkers.
€29per person
Trevi Fountain & Baroque Rome by Night
Rome's baroque centre empties out after dinner, and this evening walk uses that. You start at the Trevi Fountain when the floodlights are on and the coach groups have gone, then loop through Piazza di Pietra, Sant'Ignazio and Piazza Navona, ending at the Pantheon's portico. Your guide explains how popes, architects and rival sculptors competed street by street, and where the water in the fountains still arrives from.
€32per person
St Peter's Basilica & Dome Climb
Start under Bernini's colonnade, then head inside St Peter's for the Pietà, the baldachin and the crypt of the popes before climbing to the dome. Your guide handles the security line and paces the 551 steps, with the lift covering the first stretch. From the lantern you look straight down the nave of the square and out across the rooftops to the Janiculum. The walk ends on the terrace with time to take photographs at your own pace.
€55per person
Roman Forum & Palatine Hill at Sunrise
The Forum opens early and almost nobody uses that. You enter as the light comes over the Temple of Saturn, walk the Via Sacra while it is still cool, then climb the Palatine for the imperial palaces and the view down into the Circus Maximus. Your archaeologist guide rebuilds the square in conversation, so the broken columns turn back into a working city of law courts, markets and temples before the day heats up.
€59per person
Jewish Ghetto Food & History Walk
The oldest Jewish community in Europe has cooked in these few streets for two thousand years, and the food tells the history better than any plaque. You taste carciofi alla giudia fried to order, kosher pizza ebraica dense with candied fruit, and ricotta and cherry tart from a bakery that has not changed its recipe. Between stops your guide walks you past the Portico d'Ottavia, the Great Synagogue and the Turtle Fountain.
€72per person
Colosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Guided Tour
Step onto the arena-side walkway of the Colosseum with a licensed guide who can tell you where the lifts hauled up the animals and how a crowd of fifty thousand cleared the stands in minutes. From there you cross into the Roman Forum and climb the Palatine, ending on a terrace above the ruins with the whole city laid out. Groups stay under fifteen people and headsets mean you hear every word.
€72per person
Appian Way E-Bike Tour with Aqueduct Park
Ride the original basalt paving of the Via Appia Antica, where Roman tombs still line the verges and traffic is banned for most of the route. Electric bikes flatten the hills, so you cover ground a walking tour cannot: the Circus of Maxentius, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and the open meadows of Parco degli Acquedotti where six aqueducts march across the fields. Helmets, bikes and a support guide are included.
€79per person
Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Skip-the-Line
Walk into the Vatican Museums ahead of the general queue with an art historian who knows which galleries reward a slow look and which are simply corridors. You will trace the collection from the Pinecone Courtyard through the Gallery of Maps to Raphael's Rooms, then step into the Sistine Chapel with the ceiling already explained, so you spend your time looking up rather than working out what you are seeing. Groups are capped at 12 so nobody loses the guide in the crowd.
€79per person
Watercolour Painting Class in a Trastevere Studio
Three hours in a working artist studio off Via della Lungaretta, learning to build a Roman rooftop scene in watercolour from a first pencil sketch to the last wash. Your teacher paints alongside you and adjusts to whatever level you arrive at, including none at all. Materials are laid out for you and the finished painting travels home flat in a card sleeve.
€85per person
Trastevere Evening Food Walk
Six tastings across Trastevere's back lanes, ordered the way a Roman would eat them: supplì standing at the counter, pizza al taglio by weight, a plate of cacio e pepe sitting down, cheese and cured meat with a glass of Lazio white, then maritozzo for dessert. Between stops your guide walks you past Santa Maria in Trastevere and explains why this side of the river cooks differently. Vegetarian versions are available on request.
€89per person
Pasta Making Class with a Roman Nonna
Flour goes straight on the wooden table in a family kitchen in Monti, and you make two shapes by hand - fettuccine and cacio e pepe tonnarelli - before sitting down to eat what you rolled with a carafe of Lazio white. Nonna Rita corrects your thickness without ceremony and sends everyone home with the recipes written out. Four hours, twelve people at most, and nobody leaves hungry.
€95per person
Castel Gandolfo & Frascati Wine Afternoon
The hills south of Rome are where Romans go when the city gets hot. You drive up to Castel Gandolfo for the papal palace terrace above Lake Albano, then down into Frascati for a tasting at a family winery among the vines: three whites, one red, and a board of local cheese, porchetta and bread. There is time to walk Frascati's market square before the return, and the whole afternoon is built around a small group.
€109per person
Tivoli Day Trip: Villa d'Este & Hadrian's Villa
An hour east of Rome, two very different visions of luxury sit within a short drive of each other. Hadrian's Villa is an emperor's private city of pools, baths and colonnades spread over open countryside; Villa d'Este answers it a thousand years later with terraced gardens and hundreds of fountains powered entirely by gravity. Travel is by air-conditioned minivan with a guide, and lunch is free time in Tivoli's old town.
€129per person
Rome by Golf Cart: Private Highlights Drive
A private electric golf cart takes four of you through lanes no coach can enter, from the Pantheon to the Janiculum terrace, with your driver-guide stopping wherever the light or the story is good. It covers ground a walking tour never reaches in three hours and suits travellers who want the city without the mileage. Pick-up is from your central hotel or a meeting point of your choice.
€290per person