Giulia Tofana and Corte Savella: A Pay-What-You-Want Walk

This walk names its people, which most ghost tours do not. Giulia Tofana sold a preparation of arsenic disguised as a devotional oil. It was odourless, tasteless, slow, and it went to women who had no legal way out of a marriage. The number of husbands she is credited with is unverifiable and the trial record is not. The walk stops at the house. Benvenuto Cellini made some of the finest metalwork of the 16th century and was, by his own written account, a murderer. His house is on the route. Corte Savella was the only prison in Rome permitted to carry out executions inside its own walls, and it is where Beatrice Cenci was tortured before hers. The route also takes in Castel Sant'Angelo, the ten angels on the bridge carved by Bernini and his workshop, each holding an instrument of the Passion; Via Giulia, laid out by Bramante for Julius II and still lined with Renaissance palaces; the arch with a reputation; the house of a notably gentle executioner; and the church of the confraternity that collected unclaimed corpses, its interior full of skulls and carved bones. It ends in Campo de' Fiori, under Giordano Bruno. Age 12 and over only. The guides work pay-what-you-want: they are paid by what you decide the walk was worth, at the end.