ANCIENT TO MODERN · WORLDWIDE
Stand where it all happened.
Guided history tours across the world: the Colosseum and the Forum, the Acropolis, the temples of Angkor and Kyoto, medieval underground, castles, and the dark stories told after dark. Pick a civilisation, an era, or a corner of the map.
Where the story begins
Three civilisations that built the world.
Most destinations have a history. These three wrote the script the rest of the world still follows. Start with the empire, the democracy and the dynasty that everything came after.
Caput Mundi
Ancient Rome
No other ruin puts you inside the machinery of an empire like the Colosseum. Fifty thousand spectators once filled its tiers; below the arena floor, a warren of cells and lifts staged the spectacle. Stand in the Forum afterwards and the whole capital of the ancient world is laid out in marble at your feet.
- 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
The first democracy
Classical Greece
The Parthenon has crowned Athens for nearly twenty-five centuries, raised in the same decades that the city invented the idea of citizens ruling themselves. From the Acropolis the lineage runs out across the Aegean to Delphi, Olympia and the open-air theatres where Greek drama was first performed.
- 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
Four thousand years
Egypt of the Pharaohs
The pyramids of Giza were already ancient when Rome was founded. Egypt offers the deepest continuous record on earth: pharaonic tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the temple colonnades of Karnak and Luxor, and hieroglyphs that held their secrets until two centuries ago.
See all 1 →If you do one thing
The history tour the whole world books.
Of every guided history experience on the site, more travellers choose this one than any other. A good place to start.
The classics
The World's Most Popular History Tours
The Colosseum, the Acropolis, the medieval underground and the great walled cities. The tours travellers cross continents to take.
Where to begin
The histories worth crossing a border for.
Ancient Rome and Greece, the sacred sites, the castles and palaces, the dark-history walks and the World Heritage wonders. Six places the past comes alive, and the best tour for each.
The big decision
Which Colosseum ticket?
It is the most-booked monument on earth, and the ticket you choose changes the visit completely. Three ways in, depending on how close to the action you want to get.
After dark
The history they don’t put on the plaque.
Every old city has a second history that only comes out at night: plague pits and public executions, the witch trials, the true-crime corners and the ghosts the locals still half-believe in. A lantern-lit walk through the streets of Edinburgh, Prague, York or New Orleans is the most atmospheric way to hear it.
Read the guide: the best ghost & dark history tours →The old quarters
Centuries of life, and one of memory.
From the synagogues of Prague and Kraków to the old Jewish quarters of Seville, Porto and Venice, these walks trace a community woven through Europe for a thousand years, and a remembrance of what was lost. A guide turns the street names and stones back into the lives that filled them.
See the Jewish heritage tours →World Heritage
The places the world agreed to keep.
A thousand-odd sites carry the UNESCO World Heritage seal: the ones humanity decided were too important to lose. Angkor and Petra, Pompeii and the pyramids, the old towns of Dubrovnik and Kraków. A single list that doubles as the ultimate history bucket-list.
Explore the World Heritage tours →Beneath the old town
The Middle Ages are a staircase down.
Under the squares of Prague, Edinburgh and half the old cities of Europe lies an earlier town: vaulted cellars, plague-era passages, dungeons and bricked-up streets the modern city was built straight over. Guided descents take you down into the medieval layer most visitors walk over without knowing.
- 1 Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tour
- 2 Prague: Oldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History Tour
- 3 Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour
By the age
Travel by the depth of the past.
Some travellers want marble and myth; some want castles and cathedrals; some want the century just gone. Pick where on the timeline you want to stand.
The ancient world
Marble, myth and empire.The Colosseum and the Forum, the Acropolis and Delphi, Ephesus and the pharaohs. Where the western story begins.
Castles & cathedrals
Walled towns and old faith.Medieval underground, hilltop fortresses, great cathedrals and the synagogues and mosques of the old quarters.
The modern age
Revolutions and the war years.The American founding, the world wars, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War divide, still legible on the ground.
Sacred ground
The buildings people gave a century to raise.
Cathedrals that took three hundred years to finish, mosques and monasteries, the temple complexes of Angkor and Kyoto and the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba where two faiths share one roof. Whatever you believe, these are the most ambitious things the past ever built, and a guide unlocks the meaning in the stone.
See all 27 sacred site tours →By region
Pick a corner of the map.
Rome and Italy for the empire underfoot. Greece for the temples. Japan for the old capitals. Vietnam for its ancient towns and the war years. India for the forts and havelis. The American South for its antebellum streets.
By era & theme
Or pick the kind of history.
Ancient Rome if you want the empire. Greece if you want the temples. Medieval if you want the underground. Castles, Jewish heritage, the dark-history walks, or where the food and the past meet.
Plan it
A history-lover’s grand tour.
If you had the time to follow the timeline around the globe, here is the shape it would take.
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