Rome Tours

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations for this signature Your Own Italy tour of The Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. The art of The Vatican is among the most recognizable in the world. In leading you through the museums, your guide will convey the tantalizing background of the masterpieces, the geniuses who created them, and the powers who commissioned them. In the Sistine Chapel, below the largest and most renowned fresco in the world, your tour guide will...

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you to the Vatican for this delightful early morning tour. A buffet breakfast will be served outdoors in the Vatican's famous Pinecone Courtyard while The Vatican Museums are still closed to the public. Following your meal, you will tour galleries of sculptures, paintings and tapestries before entering the Sistine Chapel to contemplate its masterpieces at your own pace, far from the noise of crowds. You’ll walk through enchanting...

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you to the Vatican for this enchanting stroll through the galleries of The Vatican Museums after dark! On select Friday evenings you can enjoy ancient sculptures, iconic paintings, and centuries of history brought to life by your private guide, and in the former palaces of the Pope you'll have the opportunity to view sculptures from antiquity that inspired Michelangelo almost 2,000 years later. You'll view the fantastic frescoes...

Your guide and driver will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you on a tour to visit the three great patriarchal basilicas of Rome. The Basilica of St. John Lateran, the oldest and most important, has been set aside for use by the Pope as his own parish. The famous church is topped with impressive statues along the outer face and full of beauty inside. The main walls are covered in beautiful frescos from the Renaissance age and the main nave, restored four centuries ago, will...

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations for a delightful tour to discover the Eternal City in the footsteps of Michelangelo the painter, the sculptor, and the architect. Your guide will explain the history and context of his art as well as anecdotes about his life. The tour begins at Porta Pia, a gate to Rome that was one of the genius's last works. The second destination, the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, is a masterful architectural reorganization of an ancient bathhouse...

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you to the Borghese Gallery where you will marvel at masterpieces by Titian, Caravaggio, Raphael, and Bernini that made the Borghese family the premier collectors of their day. Their former suburban palace turned private museum is now one of the most important, and certainly one of the most elegant, museums in Rome. Handed over to the Italian state in 1902, the present-day museum covers two floors, with sculptures on the ground...

Your guide will pick you up at your hotel for a delightful tour exploring Baroque Rome through the life and work of architect and sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, a man who helped reshape the city in the 1600s. Beginning in Rome’s central historical district and the seat of the Italian government, you will visit San Lorenzo in Lucina and Sant’Andrea delle Fratte churches, where Bernini and his rival Borromini lived while in Rome. At the Piazza Barberini you will see Bernini’s Fontana del Tritone,...

Your guide will meet you at your accommodations and will accompany you on your “Dolce Vita” Tour. You’ll uncover the secrets locked in Bernini’s work, marvel at the Pantheon (ancient Rome's best-preserved monument), toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain to ensure your return to the Eternal City, and simply enjoy Rome’s charming streets in a leisurely Italian fashion. By the end of the tour, you will realize that your guide has not only shown you around Rome, but has taught you how to get around...

Your guide will meet you at your accommodations and accompany you on an enchanting tour of the Eternal City. Rome is an entirely different place at night: it glows in the warmth of amber streetlights and shimmers with the golden flames of candles on cafe tables. The stones of ruins and bricks of piazzas take on a surreal and breathtaking quality in the evening that can only be described as romantic. The leisurely late stroll will include many of the most important sights in the city, such as...

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you on a journey back in time. At the Colosseum, one of the largest structures of the ancient world, Romans once gathered to watch gladiator games, animal contests, and even reenactments of sea battles. A massive stone amphitheater which seated an estimated 60,000 spectators, it was built in only eight years. Your guide will tell you about its design and construction, political purposes, fighters (both willing and unwilling), and...

Your guide and private driver will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you on a tour that will take you back to ancient times. First stop, the medieval basilica of San Clemente. This Catholic church dedicated to Pope Clement I, is built atop a Romanesque church, which was built atop numerous ancient edifices, including a temple to the god Mithras. The past becomes tangible as you walk backwards in time while descending underground layer by historical layer. Your guide and driver...

Your guide will pick you up at your hotel and will take you on a truly fascinating tour where you'll find out how a great empire falls and then reemerges in a different form of the "dark ages": the period between the demise of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. The church of San Clemente is a twelfth century church built on the remains of a fifth century church built on the remains of a Mithraic temple and other Roman structures (perhaps the Roman mint that is...

Your guide will pick you up at your accommodations and take you on a tour where the past becomes tangible as you walk backwards in time while descending underground layer by historical layer. The medieval Basilica of San Clemente, a Catholic church dedicated to Pope Clement I, is built atop a Romanesque church, which was built atop numerous ancient edifices, including a temple to the god Mithras. Afterwards, you'll imagine how the ancient Romans lived while visiting the Roman houses on the...

You’ll meet your private chef at the local open-air market and enjoy shopping for, and tasting as you go along, the various ingredients for your agreed upon Italian recipe. After ingredients have been chosen and purchased, you’ll enjoy preparing the meal in a cozy kitchen in a quintessential neighborhood of the Eternal City. You’ll learn about the origin of the various ingredients of your meal, if they are seasonal and how they have become part of the Italian food culture. Your chef will top...

Your guide will pick you up at your hotel to enjoy Rome's lovely morning atmosphere. The Campo dei Fiori was once a field of flowers but was paved in 1456 by papal order and became a site of public executions, including that of Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher burnt at the stake for heresy in 1600. Today it is a lively morning market and evening gathering place. Towards the river is the former Jewish ghetto with the breathtaking ruins of Octavia’s Porticus, a monumental marble...

Your driver will pick you up at your accommodations and accompany you to Ancient Ostia where you will meet your guide. The archeological site offers much of what a tour of Pompeii offers, in a more accessible form to those based in Rome. Founded in the 4th century BC and abandoned around AD 900, Ostia, thanks to its location as a port close to the capital, was once an important Roman city, inhabited by over 100,000 people. Its main street, the Decumanus Maximus (main street), with its ancient...

If you must see Pompeii - and you must - but had not intended on venturing further south than Rome, let Your Own Italy handle the logistics. You will be driven in a private car directly from your accommodations to the world’s most well-preserved ancient town, Pompeii where your private guide will be waiting for you. Your guide will lead you through its wealthy dwellings, whose residents enjoyed vivid wall frescoes and airy courtyards, as well as the more plebeian residences, whose inhabitants...

Your driver will pick you up at your accommodations and take you directly to Rome's train station to board the high-speed train to Florence, where your tour guide will be waiting for you. Among the sights you'll see before lunch are the Piazza della Signoria and its beautiful outdoor sculptures, symbols of the rise of municipal power, and the Piazza della Repubblica, originally the old Roman forum and later the site of the main markets and Jewish ghetto. The tour will continue to the Piazza del...