Ideal for first-time visitors, this walking tour takes in many of Rome’s most "unmissable" sights, true icons of the Eternal City. I share the cultural, historic, and artistic background of all of the sites we visit, making each one come alive and adding to your understanding of the city as a whole. We’ll visit major monuments like the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Column of Marcus Aurelius, Piazza Navona, and Campo de Fiori.

Along the way, we’ll explore off-the-beaten-track gems that many tourists miss, such as an ancient temple hidden in plain sight, a church with a baffling optical illusion, part of an aqueduct, artworks by Michelangelo, Bernini, and Caravaggio, and more. You’ll leave the tour with a deep understanding of the city, and these marvels will become even more fascinating once you know the history behind them.

The quaint streets of Rome’s Jewish quarter are steeped in a tragic history, such as the pope-ordered confinement of the Roman Jews for over four centuries. We’ll explore the monuments and history of the neighborhood, then cross the river over the Tiber Island to Trastevere, a working-class district until the 1960s that still has the feel of a small medieval village and is brimming with artistic treasures! We’ll see the adorable Turtle Fountain, the 2000-year-old Portico of Octavia, the site of the Raid of the Ghetto in October ‘43, the oldest bridge in Rome still in use, the hidden frescoes of Santa Cecilia and the medieval mosaics of Santa Maria in Trastevere.

But the true joy of exploring these neighborhoods is taking part in the Italian ritual of the passeggiata (stroll), soaking up the local color and getting some insider tips on the most authentic restaurants in the city.

Celebrated for his powerful paintings yet reviled for his life of violence, no other artist in the world conjures more intrigue than Caravaggio, the so-called “bad boy” of art history. On this tour, we’ll see a number of Caravaggio’s paintings, go in depth into his revolutionary techniques and unprecedented style, and follow in his footsteps from the art shop where his earliest unsigned works were sold to the palace where he got his first big break: from his own studio where he was evicted for making a hole in the ceiling to the alley where a tennis match turned deadly, turning him into a fugitive with a price on his head.

But there is more to this dark, violent artist than meets the eye. Just like his art, his life was a battle of dark and light. He was a contradictory figure who broke every rule in the book, who shocked Rome with his radical realism, and brought the divine and profane together in a way that had never been done before. No other artist led such a harrowing and turbulent life, and no other artist created such brutally honest paintings.

Do you want to explore a side of Rome that most tourists—even most Romans—never find? If you’ve been to Rome a few times before and think you've seen all there is to see, or if your favorite part of traveling is getting off the beaten track and discovering a city's hidden treasures, this tour is for you!

We’ll visit Borromini’s incredible Forced Perspective (pictured) where you literally won’t believe your eyes, a morbid crypt buried under a church that has been closed for decades, a 400-year-old library, and so much more.

I have spent years searching out these incredible, little-known sites, so don’t ask me to list them all here! They are my (and Rome’s) best-kept secrets, after all. But if you take this tour, I promise to spill all my secrets and show you a side of Rome only one in a million visitors will see.

Glittering mosaics, enchanting cloisters, miraculous relics, churches nearly as old as Christianity itself—these are the treasures that lie hidden on Rome’s Caelian Hill, if you know where to look! On this tour, we’ll visit:

San Clemente, truly one of the most fascinating sites in the entire city. At this “three-layer church,”  we’ll step back in time as we explore each layer of history, all the way back to the 1st century AD.

Santi Quattro Coronati, a papal fortress-turned-church, that hides the so-called “medieval Sistine Chapel” and a delightful cloister.

Santo Stefano Rotondo, a one-of-a-kind circular church with one of the most unusual architectural structures in the city, decorated with Mannerist frescoes and exquisite medieval mosaics.

Sancta Sanctorum, literally the “Holy of Holies,” once the popes’ private chapel located at the top of the Holy Stairs. It still houses rare relics, incredible medieval frescoes and mosaics, and a fascinating history.