Hidden Gems of Rome

What to Expect

Immerse in the atmosphere of other eras
During the walk, you will realize why Rome is called the Eternal City - feel the breath of time. Enter a Renaissance courtyard where you can have coffee sitting on the same stone seats as the monks in the 16th century, gazing through a secret window at Raphael's fresco. Walk through the semi-empty halls of a small palace where paintings still hang as they were hung by the cardinal owner in the 17th century. Visit a beautiful church where Gogol used to visit, to see its decoration through the eyes of travelers of that time. And you will constantly be transported to Fellini's Rome, encountering the images that inspired the director.

Grand tour in a few hours
I prefer to structure my city walks as fascinating mini-lectures or masterclasses. All stories, facts, and curiosities of the past are united by a main idea, a leitmotif, and help you remember some interesting information that will be useful in the future. My goal is to show the difference between a masterpiece and a non-masterpiece or the work of a great master and a copy, and teach you to distinguish them yourself. By the way, this is exactly what Europeans came here for during the Grand Tour - a big educational journey from the late 17th to the 19th century: to get acquainted with the masterpieces of European art and develop taste. Rome is the most suitable place for this.

Flexible route
This walk can start from different points and include different objects, leaving only the perspective unchanged. Here are a few more examples of what you will see:

• Two remarkable creations by the architect Donato Bramante, a rival of Michelangelo, which had a huge influence on all subsequent developments in architecture up to our days.
• The powerful canvases of Caravaggio: we will discuss why his works seemed so revolutionary to his contemporaries and how he differs from numerous followers, and also stroll through narrow alleys to the house where he painted one of them.
• An amazing Renaissance villa painted by Raphael and his contemporaries, with one of the first examples of false perspective in art history.
• A hidden masterpiece of optical illusion in an inner courtyard - Borromini's perspective, the main architect of the 17th century.

Seeing the famous in a new light
If we include famous monuments in the tour, I will try to make you look at them in a new way. For example, while looking at the Capitoline Wolf, you will search for differences in its ancient bronze figure and the later added Renaissance twins - we will discuss the aesthetics of the Renaissance. And in Piazza Navona, in front of the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers, we will debunk the myth of the Baroque as an "ornate, lavish style".