Quick overview: This 5 hour tour by car gives you the possibility to explore in a short time some of the most enchanting areas of the city . In each place we'll take the time necessary to soak up its beauty and to get an idea of the history, events and characters which forged it. We shall begin on the ancient Capitoline Hill which has served, since the foundation of the city 2750 years ago, as a backdrop for clashes, celebrations and legends . Today, the hill is surmounted by historically overlapping buildings culminating in Michelangelo's Renaissance masterpiece, Piazza Campidoglio , characterised by its splendid architecture , meticulous details and extraordinary harmony . From the rear of the Capitoline Hill you can enjoy a spellbinding view of the valley of the Roman Forum , once the centre of ancient Rome, with its amazing array of temples, basilicas, colonnades and roads . From here, if you listen carefully, you can still hear the stirrings of crowds incited by Cicero, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and a thousand others. Then off to the Colosseum , the imposing monument built in just over 10 years (AD69 – 80) in a period at the height of the city's wealth and power. There you'll come to know about the construction techniques utilized and about the gladiators – who they were and why the games remained so popular for over three centuries. You'll discover an unexpectedly complex society and the multiform empire that gave life to it. From here we will head to Piazza Venezia with its Monument to Victor Emmanuel which represents an important moment in our country's modern history. The Trevi Fountain , symbol of the “dolce vita”, will bewitch you with its melodic play of water and the many stories and legends inscribed its bas-reliefs.

Then to the Pantheon whose beauty and awe inspiring dimensions symbolize, without any doubt, the splendour of ancient Rome. It was designed by Hadrian , an eclectic and visionary emperor who sought to give depth and harmony to the city and to a multiethnic empire with different and often conflicting cultures, traditions and languages . Rome was at the time a city living at the height of its grandeur but all the while sowing the seeds of its unstoppable decline. Piazza Navona will cast us into yet another time and city: the city of the popes and the heart of the Baroque; Bernini's world of ingenious ideas ; the raising, after centuries, of the ancient obelisks abandoned in Roman circuses; the Fountain of the Four Rivers ; the Church of Saint Agnes and the legendary rivalry between Borromini and Bernini, the two great architects/sculptors of the Baroque. From there to Campo dei Fiori (Field of Flowers) where there exists, till this day, a small flower and fruit market. Here we will explore the contradictions of the Baroque age: Popes who patronized the arts while at the same time endorsing the ferocious trials of the Holy Inquisition . In 1600 Giordano Bruno , precursor to scientific research carried out by Galileo and Newton , was burnt alive in this very square for stating that the universe was endless and infinite. The church held this to be blasphemous for only God could be infinite. From there we go to the splendid Saint Peter's Square , heart of Christianity and for centuries the destination of infinite pilgrimages. In AD 64 this area was the site of a circus used for horse racing. It was here around the same period that Saint Peter was crucified and buried during the cruel persecution instigated by Nero . And it is precisely around his tomb that the area came to acquire a new profile thanks to the thousand popes, architects, painters and to the faithful millions who day after day contributed to its present day magnificence. The first church rose in the 4 th century AD and was consecrated in the very presence of the emperor Constantine . The second church, begun in the Renaissance, is a rich story of the artists, popes, subsidies and wars that occurred throughout an entire century of construction which culminated in the raising of Michelangelo's dome after a series of failed projects. Then off to the Janiculan Hill located to the rear of the Vatican and from which you can admire a spectacular view of the entire city – a wonderment of river, trees, domes and sky. On the other side of the Janiculan Hill is the quarter of Trastevere , famous for its narrow, quaint cobble stoned streets, the many restaurants, art galleries and the enchanting church of Santa Maria in Trastevere with its mosaics and rich history of medieval legends . We will end our journey on the other bank of the river up on the Aventine Hill, a silent retreat lost in time located in the centre of the city. At the heart of this ancient location is the Christian church of Saint Sabina which was constructed over a pre-existing Temple of Juno . Here lived, among others, Domenico Guzman, founder of the Dominican order , who brought with him from Spain an orange tree - the memory of which can be found in the adjacent cloister. And in the Garden of Oranges we can take in yet another breath of infinite beauty of the entire city which by now will feel closer, friendlier and richer from all the places and stories experienced .