HISTORY TOURS · AROUND THE WORLD
Walk straight into the past.
The Colosseum and the Forum in Rome, the Acropolis in Athens, the forts of Delhi, the temples of Angkor. Real reviews of the guided walks, ruins, castles and museum tours worth your morning, in the cities where history is still standing.
Worth the trip for the history alone
Three cities where the past is still standing.
Some places you visit for the view. Rome, Athens and Delhi you visit for what happened there: the arena floor, the marble temple on the hill, the forts of a fallen empire. The cities where a walking tour is a walk through the centuries.
Italy
Rome
No city wears its history more openly. You walk the arena floor of the Colosseum, stand in the Forum where the republic argued itself into an empire, then drop below the streets to the layers older Rome was built on top of. A guide turns a field of broken columns into the centre of the ancient world, and a day here is a walk through two thousand years at once.
- 1 Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tour
- 2 Rome: Colosseum with Arena, Roman Forum and Palatine Guided Tour
- 3 Colosseum with Arena, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill Guided Tour
Greece
Athens
The marble of the Parthenon still crowns the city it was built to watch over. A guided climb up the Acropolis and down through the Agora puts you where democracy, philosophy and theatre were invented, with someone to explain why a pile of weathered stone changed the world. Few cities let you stand so directly in the place an idea began.
- 1 Athens: Ancient Greek Theater Performance
- 2 From Athens: Ancient Corinth Day Trip with Canal & VR Guide
- 3 Acropolis, Parthenon & Athens Old City Heritage Walking Tour
India
New Delhi
Delhi is empire stacked on empire. The red sandstone of the Mughal forts, the tombs of forgotten sultans, the bazaars and mosques of the old walled city, the wide avenues the British laid over the top. A guide walks you from Humayun’s Tomb to the lanes of Old Delhi and connects eight centuries of rulers who each tried to make the city their own.
- 1 The Great Indian Food Tour: Old Delhi Food and Heritage Walk
- 2 Old Delhi Food, Heritage&Cultural Walk with Rickshaw ride to Masterji Kee Haveli
- 3 Old Delhi Food-Spice Market-Temples Tour Soon Featured on NETFLIX
If you only book one
The one tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every history tour on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to book it before they go.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular History Tours Right Now
The Colosseum underground, the Acropolis at opening time, a fort in Rajasthan, a temple at dawn. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a city
The best history tours, city by city.
Rome for the ancient ruins, Athens for the Acropolis, Delhi for the Mughal forts, New Orleans for the old quarter. Pick the city you are headed to and we will show you the history tours worth booking there.
Which age
Three eras worth travelling for.
Start with the period that pulls you. Each of these is a stretch of history the site covers deeply, and a very different kind of day waiting at the end of it.
Rome
Stand on the floor of the arena.
The best of Rome is below your feet and over your head at once: the Colosseum’s arena floor and the cells beneath it, the broken temples of the Forum, the Palatine where the emperors lived. A guide turns a maze of ruins into a walk through the republic and the empire, and gets you past the queues that swallow the rest of the day.
See the best Rome history tours →Athens
Climb to where the city began.
The Acropolis rises over everything, the Parthenon still keeping watch after two and a half thousand years. A guided walk takes you up through the Propylaea, down into the Agora where citizens argued and Socrates taught, and out into the Plaka at its foot. A morning here is the foundation story of the western world, told on the ground it happened.
See the best Athens history tours →Lisbon
The city the explorers sailed from.
Lisbon climbs in layers from the river: the Moorish castle on the hilltop, the tangle of Alfama that survived the great earthquake, the Belem tower and monastery raised on the gold of the age of discovery. A walking tour traces the lanes and miradouros up to the keep, telling the story of the kings, the caravels and the quake that remade the city.
See the best Lisbon history tours →Old Delhi
Empire stacked on empire.
Delhi has been the capital of one dynasty after another, and each left its monuments behind. A guide walks you from the red sandstone of the fort and the great mosque through the spice lanes of the old walled city to Humayun’s Tomb, the garden mausoleum the Taj Mahal was modelled on, connecting eight centuries of sultans and emperors street by street.
- 1 The Great Indian Food Tour: Old Delhi Food and Heritage Walk
- 2 Old Delhi Food, Heritage&Cultural Walk with Rickshaw ride to Masterji Kee Haveli
- 3 Old Delhi Food-Spice Market-Temples Tour Soon Featured on NETFLIX
How deep
How far into the past do you want to go?
One great monument in Rome. A whole old city on foot in Athens. A lost capital walked end to end at Angkor. Pick the day that matches how much history you are after.
Start here
Rome, the one great site.A guided morning at the Colosseum and the Forum, the arena floor and the streets the emperors walked. One unmissable monument, explained by someone who knows where to look. The classic first day in the ancient world.
Go deeper
Athens, the whole old city.Up to the Acropolis and the Parthenon, then down through the Agora and the Plaka where the city began. A walking day that strings the ruins together into one story, from the marble temples to the streets below them.
All in
Angkor, sunrise to last light.A full day across the temples of Angkor, from the towers of Angkor Wat at dawn to the faces of the Bayon and the roots swallowing Ta Prohm. A lost capital the size of a city, walked end to end with a guide who reads the carvings.
Angkor
A lost capital in the jungle.
Outside Siem Reap lie the temples of Angkor, the largest religious monument on earth and the heart of an empire that ruled Southeast Asia for six hundred years. Sunrise over the towers of Angkor Wat, the giant carved faces of the Bayon, the strangler figs swallowing Ta Prohm. A guide who can read the bas-reliefs turns a day of ruins into the rise and fall of the Khmer kings.
See all 6 Angkor history tours →By city
Pick a city and walk it back in time.
Rome for the ancient ruins. Athens for the Acropolis. Delhi for the Mughal forts. New Orleans for the French Quarter. Hanoi for the Old Quarter. Jodhpur for the fort above the blue city.
More cities
More cities with a story to tell.
St Augustine for the oldest streets in America, Porto for the riverside old town, Edinburgh for the castle and the closes, Prague for the medieval core. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three kinds of history day
Pick the kind of day you are after.
A morning in the ruins of Pompeii, a walk on the walls of Dubrovnik, an afternoon in the fort above Jodhpur. Three cities, three very different ways to spend a day with the past.
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