Heart of Ancient Rome

Tour The Major Ancient Rome Sites

This tour focuses on the heart of ancient Rome: Colosseum (from outside only), Roman Forum, Palatine Hill and Capitoline hill.

Join us for a crash course in ancient Roman history! Starting with Romulus and Remus, through the Republic, on to the birth and expansion of the Roman Empire. We will learn about architecture, technology, politics, power, and propaganda.  With the fall of the Empire, we will investigate the legacy of the glorious past through the apparently dormant Middle Ages until the re-birth of the Classical world during the Renaissance, and further on with the first scientific excavations in the 1800s.  

We will start from the Palatine Hill, where it all began with the twins suckled by the she-wolf and where, centuries later, the emperors built their elaborate residences in lavishly competitions to outdo their predecessors.

We will proceed through the Roman Forum, the very heart of the ancient city with its approximately 2,500 years of nearly continuous history. Here we will pause to admire the majestic Flavian Amphitheater, aka Colosseum. 

We will not go inside the Colosseum but gaze upon it from within the Roman Forum. We won’t join the long lines to go inside and squeeze through large groups. Instead, we will understand the context of its construction and what it came to symbolize throughout the centuries, from a privileged viewpoint.

Our last stop is the Capitoline hill, the sacred heart of the ancient city with some of the most important and earliest temples. We will take one last stunning view of the heart of ancient Rome before climbing up to the Campidoglio and end our tour in the square designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti.