My wife and I are going to Rome for the first time in a couple of weeks. Any suggestions for Tour Companies or Guides. We are most interested in Ancient Rome, The Vatican and Christian Rome.

THANKS.

My personal favorite guide in Rome is Scala Reale. We took their Vatican tour and loved it.

There have been many posts on this topic before with many favorable comments on tours in Rome. Do a search on "Rome Tours" and you are bound to come up with lots of good suggestions!

Rome is such a great city!

The Scala Reale/Context Rome tours come highly recommended by most posters here.

I would suggest that you put "Scala Reale" into the search box; it will bring up a great many threads full of information about their tours.

They also have a Web site, whose address I unfortunately do not have. A Google search should find it.

They are now ContextRome.

If you see a negative post from me, please ignore it. They didn't rip me off--I wasn't aware they were an American company and got annoyed when they charged my credit card in US$. They even ended up giving me a further US$4.50 back to make up the difference in currency conversion (I live in the UK), even though I told them it wasn't necessary.

I always recommend Giancarlo Alu. He's been a tour guide in Rome for 35 years. You can reach him via e-mail at [email protected], but his preferred method of contact is telephone. (He has voicemail if he's not able to answer the call himself, and it will begin in Italian, but he'll come on in English prompting you to leave a message.)

From the USA, his phone is 011.393.498.405435.

Buon Viaggio,
BC

Why don't you check with your hotel, they may have a 'tour desk' and if they do, I suggest you use them. They're great!!

My daughter and I took tours of ancient Rome and of the Vatican with Enjoy Rome at www.enjoyrome.com. We found that it really enhanced our experience of these places.

Let me give you my $0.02 worth.

The Scala Reale is a bit, pricey but worth it!! Your guide is grad student studying in the area of the walk's theme. When our docent was going through the Forum she said "And we think ........" in other word she was in Rome on the ground involved in the study of what she was talking about.

I think the Vatican offers a tour of the Necropolis - the burial place of St. Paul. You can Google & get the needed info. By the way, the Pope's altar is directly over his grave, fulfilling the prophesy "Upon this Rock I will build my church....."


Good luck
Greg S

My partner and I were in Rome in August and we used Scala/Context also. We really really enjoyed the underground tour of Nero's house and our docent was an architect who really explaned things very well. It was well worth the cost. The second tour we took with them, which had to be scheduled the same day...whew (due to illness the previous day of their docent) was of the vatican. I enjoyed the tour but my other half didn't like the guide. I thought he was very insightful.

We booked 3 tourse with Scale Reale/Context Rome: Classic Rome II, Roma Antica, & Arte Vaticana (with John Boyden). Is it possible to do a day trip to Venice from Rome?

Hi Kyle,
You can do a day trip to/from Rome/Florence without a problem, but Rome/Venice won't work.

Buon Viaggio,
BC