My favorite part of planning our clients’ trips to Italy is the opportunity to help them get the very most of their time in each city. Today, we focus on the best way to Visit Ancient Rome.
Clients often ask for help deciding the sites they need a guide to see and the places they can wander and appreciate on their own. My first response is always the same. I highly recommend a guide for Ancient Rome.
Climb the many steps of the Vittorio Emanuele II monument and the view will leave you awestruck.
From this memorial of Italy’s unification, it’s hard not to feel the Italian pride as you pick through the ruins from above.
There’s the Colosseum, the one you’ve read about all these years. And the Forum, it’s right there, people strolling the ancient rocky streets and gazing up at the remains of arches and temples.
Visiting on your own is incredible, but first, go with a guide and take a tour. Even for those of us who have studied Roman history for many years, a guide will bring it all to life.
When you see this place in all its grandeur pictures in books fade away and leave you longing to know what happened beneath each column.
With a guide, you will be shown all the important places: where Caesar’s body was laid and burned, where Mark Antony supposedly gave his speech made famous by Shakespeare, where the Vestal Virgins tended their fire, where the Senate met, where the people lived… the list goes on and on.
As you walk the streets of Rome you will see tiny little statues of a wolf nursing two baby boys, do you know the story? After the tour, you will not only know the story, but appreciate its significance.
Today atop the Palatine Hill orange and palm trees shade tourists trying to imagine it in its glory days. It is beautiful, with expansive views.
You’ll have to do the tour to hear the whole story, but a shorted version goes like this:
Long ago, two little boys were abandoned and rescued by a she-wolf who nursed them and raised them. After much arguing over where to found their city Romulus won, and founded Rome on the Palatine Hill.
As you gaze from the top of the hill down onto the rest of Rome it becomes easier to picture everything that happened here, and all the people whose feet once walked the same paths yours stand on today.
At the end of your tour, you will have a greater understanding of Rome, of its people, and of how they lived.
Of all the souvenirs, all the things pretty things that tempt us in shop windows, none last as long, none are treasured quite as dearly as our memories.
Contact Us to plan your tour, and for charming accommodation in the heart of Rome.
Lindsay Sinko, Passion for Italy Travel USA