Rome is a city rich with monuments from every historical period, which attract tourists from all over the world to the Eternal City, but few find the time to truly get to know the culture of this city, its traditions and its arts and professions, some of which perhaps were born together with this city centuries ago.

For this reason, we started offering  new tour experiences that are the union of a classic “traditional” tour heading out to discover the most representative monuments of this city, and the exploration of an historic neighborhoods, heading out to discover typical local activities and traditions of art, food and crafts that make the neighborhood alive.

We will discover different districts of Rome such as Monti but also Trastevere and many others, all with a unique identity and traditions different from the other districts. We will explore the different shops that characterize the center of Rome and their history through the stories of artists and artisans who have been carrying out these centuries-old arts and crafts for generations.

We will visit workshops of goldsmiths, potters, engravers, leather workers, tailors, restorers and artist studios, and there will certainly be farmers and merchants of products at km 0 who promote Rome with the taste and flavors of the typical roman cuisine, a mix of cultures and influences that have merged over thousands of years. This tour will allow you to meet those who with their art carry on an ancient tradition in an increasingly modern city, trying to combine tradition with modern taste.

Our most popular Art, Food and Crafts Tour is the one we run in the very central Rione Monti, one of the oldest districts of Rome, right next to the Colosseum. The tours are structured with visits to the most characteristic monuments of the neighborhood, alternating with visits to artisans workshops and artists studios, who will share with us their work and their craft traditions, also carrying out small laboratory demonstrations. The Art, Food and Crafts tour ends with a tasting of traditional Roman food products, or reworked in a modern way.

Among the workshops and artisan shops that we will visit in Monti there will be:

Engraving workshops, where we will be able to discover the secrets and peculiarities of the engraving technique, and relive the atmosphere of the ancient workshops of the 15th and 16th centuries when artists, engravers and students were to experiment together with morsure, burnishing, berceau, waxes, hand prints with rollers, pads and many other work tools.

Goldsmith workshops, where we will discover the characteristics of this millenary technique, learning how a custom-made artifact is made with traditional tools, some of which can be linked to the ancient goldsmith’s art. We will discover how even today the goldsmith craftsmen use ancient tools such as files, hammers, scales, calipers, dies, drills, bits and pliers.

Ceramic and mosaic workshops, characterized by different techniques. We will discover the dovetail processing, a series of clay cylinders (often) made by hand that are superimposed on each other making them adhere to each other with a slight pressure of the hand. It is a very ancient technique, later on perfected with the introduction of the lath, which allows greater precision in execution.

Leather workshops, where every object or artifact starts from a project, or in this case a scale pattern to avoid errors in the assembly phase. Here, too, there is no shortage of special tools for this craft, such as a wide range of specific pliers for each step, the double awl, cutters, edge markers and of course needles and thread to give consistency and sew the various pieces of leather together, a long and precision technique where any mistake can compromise the success of the product.

To conclude the tour there will be a tasting session of typical Roman food products such as pecorino, porchetta, white pizza with “mortazza” (mortadella) and many other flavors served following the Roman tradition, but also reworked in a modern way to satisfy more palates with a different range of tastes and flavors.

For info and reservations of the Monti Food, Art and Crafts Tour (or any other typical neighbourhood of Rome, including small cities outside Rome and within its province), please contact me directly. In the meanwhile, continue to follow our blog and our Facebook page.