Dinner by Candlelight in Agrippa's Baths, Behind the Pantheon

The rooms you eat in belonged to the Baths of Agrippa, the first public baths ever built in Rome, put up by Marcus Agrippa in the 20s BC. Agrippa also built the first Pantheon, a few metres away, and the two were part of the same scheme: a bath complex and a temple raised together on the Campus Martius by the same man. The baths are almost entirely gone. These are among the last rooms left of them, and you get to sit down in one. The tasting is by candlelight, which is not a stage effect so much as the only lighting that suits a brick vault below street level. What you get is a guided pairing rather than a set menu: wine and food matched course by course with the reasoning explained, from the aperitivo through to dessert, working through Roman recipes. There is also a talk on what the Romans actually ate and drank, which is stranger than most people expect and rarely covered anywhere else in the city. Access is limited, so it stays small. Meet your host at the Osteria, Via dei Cestari 38.