We are planning a trip in November 2014 and we are normally not ones to go on guided tours. Our son is a huge Roman History buff, and we thought it might make sense to do a good guided ancient Roman history tour since the ruins aren't going to look like he imagines when reading. He will be 12 and we think a tour with a history student or something would be perfect. I have found some tours on line, but don't know how to evaluate which are better than others--we don't want a touristy thing, but rather more a "real" history type tour. I have found tours run by Av Venture Bellisime, Enjoy Rome, Viator, and Walks Inside Rome. Does anyone have any experience with these or any others they would recommend? Thanks!
Posted by
Atlanta, Ga, USA
2023 posts
We thought Context was great. Our group of six had a native of Rome as our guide. She was a teacher when not working for Context.
Posted by
Seattle, WA, USA
7737 posts
Consider Context Travel. They have smaller groups (max. 6 persons) and are led by people with advanced degrees in whatever subject they're talking about. They consistently get high marks here and they offer a huge variety of tours, not just in Rome but Florence and Venice as well.
Posted by
Denver
807 posts
I would also suggest Context Tours. My husband and I are NOT big guided tours types - we primarily rely on history-heavy guide books (like the Blue Guide to Rome). But we did take the Context Tour of the Palatine Hill, the Forum and the Colosseum - I took it for the Palatine Hill portion primarily, as those ruins are the most ruinous. Our guide was, as I recall, a grad student in history, and very knowledgeable (and I had done a lot of reading on ancient Rome). She was also interesting to those in our small group, like my husband, who had less background info. Also, there are books available in Rome and on Amazon that will be invaluable - they have pictures of the sites as they are now, with a plastic overlay that shows how the site would have looked at a previous date in history. Very helpful!