Rome by Night, Privately: Everything Seen from Outside

Stated plainly at the top, because it decides whether this is the right booking: every monument on this route is seen from the outside. At night they are closed anyway, so nothing is being withheld. What you are buying is the walk between them with a private guide and the city with its daytime traffic gone. It starts at the Colosseum and runs along the Via dei Fori Imperiali, taking the history from the founding myth to the collapse of the empire while you are standing in the ground where it happened. Trajan's Column comes next, carved to record the conquest of Dacia, roughly modern Romania. Then up onto the Capitoline, into the square Michelangelo designed, and out to the terrace behind it. From there the Roman Forum lies below, lit, and there is no better view of it in the city. Down into the centre past Largo Argentina, where Caesar was killed, to the Pantheon, and finally Piazza Navona. Private, so the pace and the emphasis are yours. There are two taxi ranks near the square where it ends, which at that hour is worth knowing.