The history tour, from a Roman arena to a Charleston side street.
Which Colosseum ticket actually reaches the arena floor. What a Lisbon walking guide costs. Whether the Prague underground earns a second morning. Reviews of the history and heritage tours you can book in 45 countries.
MedievalOldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History TourCellars and a dungeon under the Old Town Square. from $31
RenaissanceVenice’s Best: Basilica, Doge’s Palace, Gondola & History GalleryThe Doge’s Palace, the basilica and the gallery above it. from $129
ColonialHistoric Charleston Guided Sightseeing Walking TourChurch steeples, single houses and the alleys behind them. from $30
Rome, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Boston: four history mornings already solved.
The bookings a first history trip tends to hang off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The Roman morningColosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourThe arena floor and the tunnels beneath it on a timed pass. Take the first slot, before the stone starts holding the heat.
02The city on footHistory, Stories and Lifestyle Walking TourAlfama and the Baixa with a guide who can point out the 1755 earthquake in the shape of the streets.
03The castleEdinburgh Castle Guided History Tour with TicketsEntry plus a guide, so the Half Moon Battery and the Stone of Destiny arrive with the reasons they matter.
04The revolutionFreedom Trail History Small Group Walking TourThe brick line through the North End in small-group size, rather than at the back of a crowd of forty.
Six old cities where the history is the reason you booked.
A Roman arena, a Lisbon hillside, two Southern ports that kept their eighteenth-century street plan, a castle on volcanic rock and two thousand years of London. The best guided day in each.
American history is mostly a walking tour, and it starts in the old ports.
Charleston, Savannah, Boston and New Orleans hold more standing eighteenth-century street than anywhere else in the country. Three kinds of history day, what each costs to join, and how much ground it covers.
The history walking tour is still the best two hours in an old city.
A guide, a fixed route and enough stops to make the street plan legible. Salem, Lisbon, Boston and Charleston lead the field. In summer, book the early slot.
- 1History and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking Tourfrom $36
- 2History, Stories and Lifestyle Walking Tourfrom $29
- 3London Small Group Tour of Historical Pubsfrom $40
These are the history tours the queues form for.
Every history tour on the site →What earns each of them the slot, and what it costs to join.
1
History and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking Tour
Explore Salem’s witch trial history, haunted lore, and colonial streets on a two-hour guided walk, with lantern-lit evening tours available.
From · $36
Read our review →
2
Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tour
from $160
3
History, Stories and Lifestyle Walking Tour
from $29
4
London Small Group Tour of Historical Pubs
from $40
5
Oldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History Tour
from $31
6
Charleston’s Old South Carriage Historic Horse & Carriage Tour
from $50
7
Edinburgh Castle Guided History Tour with Tickets
from $49
8
Beneath The Streets Underground History Tour
from $29
Ancient history tours: the arena first, then everything under it.
Rome sells the Colosseum three different ways and only one of them puts you on the arena floor. Delphi, Corinth, Pompeii and Syracuse are day trips with a bus timetable attached. Take the guide.
Every ancient history tour →
What a guided history day actually costs.
Every priced tour on the site, grouped by what you pay to join it. Most of the great city walks sit in the cheapest band.
Old-town walks, audio routes, single site entries and the two-hour city guides.
Full days: Pompeii out of Rome, the arena-floor Colosseum slots, small-group walks with entry included.
Private historians, whole-day escorted trips and the once-a-trip splurge.
Three history tours that cannot be taken anywhere else.
Ruins and old towns repeat across the map. An arena floor in Rome, a street buried under Prague and a hillside of Ottoman glass above the Osum do not.
The arena floor
Most Colosseum tickets put you on the two upper tiers looking down. A limited number of guided slots go the other way, onto the reconstructed arena floor and into the hypogeum below it, where the lifts and the animal pens were. Each slot is capped, the underground closes in heavy rain, and none of it is included in the standard ticket.
- 1Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 12,691 reviews
- 2Colosseum with Arena, Roman Forum and Palatine Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 5,598 reviews
- 3Colosseum with Arena, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,526 reviews
The street underneath
Old Town Square sits roughly three metres above the ground the city was first built on. The Vltava flooded so persistently that Prague simply raised the level and left the old ground floors intact underneath. Tours drop into the vaults and the dungeon, where the temperature holds at about twelve degrees all year, which is the real argument for going in August.
- 1Oldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 10,277 reviews
- 2Prague Old Town, Medieval Underground and Dungeon Historical Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,227 reviews
- 3Templar Tour Convent of Christ & Almourol Castle from Lisbon★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 704 reviews
A thousand windows
Berat stacks Ottoman houses up two facing hillsides above the Osum, each one glazed with so many panes that Albanians call it the town of a thousand windows. The quarter across the river is still lived in, the castle above it holds a working neighbourhood inside the walls, and the whole thing is a two-hour drive from Tirana.
- 1World Heritage Shirakawa-go and Experience Tours from Kanazawa★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,049 reviews
- 2Berat UNESCO Heritage & Belshi Lake Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 3,863 reviews
- 3Bali: Tanah Lot UNESCO World Heritage Sites Full-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,947 reviews
What actually gates a history tour: slots, closed days and dress.
Almost none of this runs on the weather. It runs on timed entry, on the one day a week a site shuts, on whether a guide can get you inside at all, and on covered shoulders at the door.
- 01Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourEntry runs on timed, capped slots, and the arena floor and the tunnels underneath are sold separately from the standard ticket.
- 02Discover the Ancient Ruins of Pompeii: Day Trip from RomeForty-four hectares of open stone with almost no shade, and the gates shut long before dark. Go at opening, with a guide who knows the short route.
- 03Córdoba: Skip-the-Line Great Mosque-Cathedral History TourThe cathedral inside the mosque holds services, so the first hour is the only reliably quiet one, and covered shoulders are expected at the door.
- 04Budapest Jewish Heritage Memorial Walking Tour & Synagogue EntryAdmission closes for Shabbat and the high holidays, and the memorial garden beside it asks for a quiet group. Book the tour that carries the ticket.
Ghost walks are history tours with the lights off.
Salem, Savannah, New Orleans, Edinburgh and Stockholm all run them, and the good ones are led by guides who know the court records as well as the stories. A lantern, a burying ground, a two-hour route and an early sell-out.
Twentieth-century history is guided differently, and that is the point.
Memorials, ghetto walls, bunkers and wartime sites are ticketed, often timed, and led by guides trained for them. Expect a fixed route, a small quiet group, and no photography where a site asks for none.
- 1Communism History and Nuclear Bunker Guided Tourfrom $44
- 2World War II Historical Walking Tourfrom $31
- 3Prague Communism History and Nuclear Bunker Tourfrom $45
Pick a century and the history tour follows.
Ancient
Medieval
Castles
Colonial
1939 to 1945
Cold War
By kind of history day
New history tour reviews, newest first.
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Lima´s Vibrant Heritage & Larco Museum of Cultures Half Day Tour
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Distillery District Food & History Tour in Lexington
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Leeds Ghost Tour Explore the Haunting History of Leeds
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Tour of Lecce with a visit to the basement of the ancient synagogue
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Jewish Museum and Ancient Jewish District – Private guided tour
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Guided Tour of the Historic Attractions of Lecce Private
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