About Real Rome Tours

Real Rome Tours is built around a simple idea: visiting Rome should feel personal, well organised, and genuinely rewarding.

Over the years, we have built a close network of licensed guides who know the city deeply and share a real love for it. Some are Romans. Some are Italians who chose to make Rome their home. Others, like Gerard, came from abroad, fell in love with the city, and stayed.

What connects everyone we work with is not one single background, but the same approach: warmth, professionalism, clear communication, and a real passion for helping people understand Rome, not just see it.

Our values, in practice

Honesty
If something isn’t realistic, we’ll say so clearly and offer sensible alternatives.

Integrity
We don’t oversell, overpromise, or push people into a schedule that doesn’t suit them.

Transparency
You’ll know what’s included, what isn’t, and what the plan is before your tour begins.

Dedication
We plan carefully, communicate clearly, and stay involved before and during your time in Rome.

Personal service
If something goes wrong, we take responsibility and focus on putting it right.

How we work

We believe the best tours come from matching the right guide to the right experience.

That means working with people we know well, trust, and genuinely enjoy collaborating with — licensed guides with different strengths, personalities, and areas of expertise.

Some guests want a guide who is warm and easy-going. Others prefer someone more academic, more theatrical, or more in-depth. We try to make that match thoughtfully, so the experience feels personal from the start.

Licensed guides we work with regularly

Real Rome Tours works with a small circle of trusted, licensed guides in Rome. They are independent professionals, not full-time employees, but they are guides we know personally and are happy to recommend to our guests. Each guide brings their own style, background, and areas of expertise, and we do our best to match each tour with the guide best suited to that experience.

Meet Heidi

Heidi is one of the licensed guides we work with regularly in Rome. She brings warmth, clarity, and a calm, thoughtful presence to her tours, helping guests feel comfortable while also giving them a deeper understanding of the city.

She is especially good at making complex history feel human and accessible, which is exactly the kind of guiding we value at Real Rome Tours. When Heidi leads a tour, guests are in the hands of someone knowledgeable, kind, and genuinely engaged with the experience.

Meet Max

Max is a licensed tour guide in Rome, a published author, and a gifted storyteller with a deep love of the city’s history.

His tours bring together historical knowledge, humour, and a natural ability to make complex stories feel clear and alive. Whether he is guiding visitors through Ancient Rome, the Vatican, or the quieter corners of the city, Max has a way of connecting big historical events with the human stories behind them.

Guests often appreciate his warmth, intelligence, and easygoing personality. He is the kind of guide who can adapt naturally to the pace and interests of each group, making the experience feel personal rather than scripted.

Max is one of the licensed guides Real Rome Tours is always happy to recommend for visitors who want an engaging, thoughtful, and memorable tour of Rome.

Meet Claudia

Claudia is a licensed tour guide in Rome with wide-ranging expertise across several fields, from ancient history and archaeology to art, culture, and the layered life of the city.

She brings a rare combination of knowledge, warmth, and personality to her tours. Her style is clear, engaging, and generous, helping guests understand Rome not only as a collection of monuments, but as a living city shaped by centuries of politics, faith, art, daily life, and human ambition.

Claudia is especially good at adapting to different types of visitors — from first-time travellers who want the essential story, to curious guests who enjoy a deeper and more detailed conversation.

Her friendly manner and depth of knowledge make her one of the licensed guides Real Rome Tours is very happy to work with regularly.

Meet Gerard

Gerard is an Irish licensed tour guide in Rome, now based in Italy, with a particular focus on Ancient Rome.

His tours are clear, relaxed, and story-led, helping guests understand not only what they are looking at, but why it mattered — the politics, personalities, rituals, engineering, and everyday human details behind the ruins.

He especially enjoys guiding visitors through the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palatine Hill, bringing together the big historical picture with the smaller details that make the ancient city feel more human.

For Irish visitors looking for an Irish guide in Rome, Gerard brings something familiar to the experience — clear communication, a warm approach, and an understanding of both Rome and the expectations of travellers from home.

Always improving

Feedback matters to us.

We pay close attention to what guests enjoy, what could work better, and how each experience can be made clearer, smoother, and more rewarding.

Rome is a city of endless layers, and good guiding is always a work in progress. We keep learning, refining, and raising the standard.

Why it matters

For many travellers, time in Rome is limited.

That is why we believe a tour should feel well judged, well paced, and genuinely personal — not rushed, generic, or overloaded.

Our aim is simple: to help you experience Rome in a way that is clear, enjoyable, and memorable.