Private Baroque Walk, Spanish Steps to Piazza Navona

Three hours downhill through the Baroque, from the Spanish Steps to Piazza Navona, with a private guide. The route is built around the two men who shaped the century and could not have been less alike. Bernini worked for popes, designed squares and made marble behave like flesh. Caravaggio worked from the street, painted saints with dirty feet and left Rome with a warrant out for him. Their work sits within a few hundred metres of each other, which is what makes this walkable rather than a series of taxi rides. Stops: Sant'Ignazio and the flat ceiling painted to look like a dome, a trick that only works from one marked spot on the floor; the elephant carrying an obelisk in Piazza della Minerva, designed by Bernini; San Luigi dei Francesi and the three Caravaggios on Saint Matthew; the Pantheon, which is older than everything else here by fifteen centuries and taught the Baroque how a dome works; the Trevi Fountain; and Piazza Navona with the Fountain of the Four Rivers. Worth noting before you book: this operator's cancellation window is three full days, not twenty-four hours. Inside three days there is no refund.