Rome for Readers: A Literary Tour of the Eternal City

“Rome has opened my eyes to beauty,” said Hans Christian Andersen, one of the many literary geniuses who spent time in the Eternal City.

Some of the world’s greatest writers and poets traveled to Rome on cultural pilgrimages, in search of art, history, beauty and, above all, inspiration for their own work. From the Shelleys to Keats, the Brownings to Henry James, Ibsen to Gogol, and Lord Byron to Nathaniel Hawthorne, all came to Rome, and all were inspired and changed by the city.

On this walking tour, you’ll follow in the footsteps of these famous writers, making your way past many of the city’s most iconic landmarks, including Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps. You’ll find out where these writers lived and wrote their most famous lines, and where they drank coffee and met with other writers. As you stroll from Terrazza del Pincio where our tour starts to Piazza Barberini where it ends, you’ll see the sites that inspired their greatest masterpieces.

On this 90-minute literary Rome tour, you’ll:

• Hear Goethe’s first impressions upon arriving in the Eternal City
• Find out which Russian writer felt he could only write about Russia from Rome
• See Antico Caffè Greco where Gogol would write for hours and Terrazza della Pincio where Henry James liked to sit and write while people-watching
• Discover why F. Scott Fitzgerald detested Rome
• Stroll past Hotel de Russie where Charles Dickens stayed in the mid-1800s
• Learn why James Joyce, the great Irish author, worked in a Roman bank (and hated it)
• Take in the fountain that inspired John Keats’ epitaph (Fontana della Barcaccia) from the house that Keats stayed in on Piazza di Spagna
• Figure out which famous literary couple’s beloved son died here

Most of all, you’ll hear from these writers in their own words: from famous quotes and lines of poetry to snippets from letters they sent home describing their impressions of the city, what it meant to them, and how it influenced their work.

If you’re a passionate reader, or simply want to see the beauties of Rome while hearing them described by the greatest literary minds who ever lived, this tour is for you.