Guided, Hosted, Bus, And Audio Tours: Which Is Best For You While You're In Rome?

Given that Rome is one of the most influential cities in world history, knowing what you are actually looking at while exploring its ruins definitely makes a trip to the Eternal City all the more valuable. The remaining columns and building fragments are much more than meets the eye. Additionally, Rome is home to some of the best museums to visit in Italy. These are why so many of the city's visitors opt for a tour of some sort.

When walking around Rome, you may see groups of people following a tour guide, identifiable by a flag or other marker to help the group stay together. These tour guides explain the surrounding landmarks or museum artifacts to the group throughout the tour. But guided tours are not the only options for many of Rome's landmarks. It is important to note the differences between guided (sometimes called escorted), hosted, and even audio tours. Deciding what the best tour option for you is comes down to how much of your trip you want to plan for you and how confident you are in your prior knowledge of Rome.

Taking part in a guided tour means a tour guide will go with you to each of Rome's landmarks on a pre-planned itinerary and teach you about them along the way. These contrast with hosted tours, wherein the tour host tends to arrange meeting points and help their guests get their bearings. You may only see the tour host at the start of the day's sightseeing. Hosts can teach you Italian words and phrases you should know and make recommendations but do not accompany you throughout your itinerary. Hosted tours can be beneficial if you simply want some of the logistics worked out on your trip, are a bit unsure about navigation details, or want some entry perks like skipping lines.

When TikToker @jetsetting_jacki discussed booking a hosted tour of the Vatican, she explains in her video that while the hosted option allowed them to skip the entry line, "We didn't have anyone walking around the museum with us, so we honestly didn't really have any idea what we were looking at." She goes on to state that a guided tour would have benefited her trip more. This is an example of how your prior knowledge of the Roman destinations on your itinerary can play a role in helping you decide between guided and hosted tours.

Some major attractions may have an audio tour option at the site. with which you receive a headset or small speaker with buttons corresponding with points of interest throughout the complex. If they're not on-site, you can also look at companies like Viator or even try an audio guide from travel expert Rick Steves. The recordings will give you extra information about the structure or museum pieces. An extra advantage is that you can take in the artifacts while listening to their descriptions instead of spending quite a bit of time reading each item or room's plaque. Audio tours also allow you to go at your own pace rather than the pace of a tour guide.

Other common types of tours are bus tours. Big tour buses, especially double-decker hop-on hop-off buses with audio accompaniment are popular for sightseeing in major cities all over Europe and the United States. Rome has these too, but as an ancient city, Rome is filled with small, winding streets that cannot accommodate big buses. Bus tours in Rome make stops at some of the most beautiful sites in Italy for ancient history lovers as long as they are located on streets that are big enough for them. Sadly, they can't make stops at the more tucked-away attractions like the Trevi Fountain, so there will still be some walking involved for those places along the narrower streets.