Unusual Rome by Private Car, for a Third or Fourth Visit

This tour assumes you have already done the Colosseum and the Vatican, and goes somewhere else. The operator calls these the fourth-day sites, which is exactly right: the places that never fit into a first trip because the first trip is spent on the obvious ones. A private car with an English-speaking driver covers them with very little walking, which also makes this a sensible choice for anyone who has spent three days on cobbles already. The route takes in Piazza Navona, the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, where Michelangelo's Moses sits in a side aisle and the chains said to have held Peter are kept under the altar, and the Janiculum Hill for the view across the whole city. What you get from a driver rather than a walking guide is range. The parts of Rome that are genuinely unvisited are unvisited because they are far apart, and a car is the only thing that solves that in an afternoon. Comfortable, unhurried, and aimed at people who want the city rather than the list. Seven hours is the length of it, hotel door to hotel door, with pickup and drop-off at both ends. The driver, the fuel surcharge and local taxes are in the price. Food, drinks and gratuities are not, and neither is admission to anything you decide to go inside on the day. If the route ends up at the catacombs, that is eight euros a head paid at the gate. The looseness is deliberate: the day is agreed with the driver as it goes rather than printed in advance, which is the practical reason those fees cannot be quoted up front. San Pietro in Vincoli is the stop that pays back knowing something first. The Moses was carved around 1513 for the tomb of Julius II, a monument first designed with dozens of figures and cut down over four decades into the wall tomb standing there now. The pope it was built for is not in it. Julius II lies in St Peter's. The horns on the head of the statue come from a translation: the Hebrew of Exodus describes Moses' face as radiant when he came down the mountain, and the Latin Vulgate turned that into horned. The Janiculum is not one of the seven hills, which is precisely why the view from it works. It stands outside the classical city and looks back across all of them. A blank round has been fired from the terrace at noon every day since the gun was moved up there in 1904, and a good part of Rome still checks the time by it. Churches mean covered shoulders and knees for everyone in the party, so pack for that if the day is hot. The vehicle is wheelchair accessible and the walking is minimal, though the operator still asks for a moderate level of fitness. Up to eight people travel and the car is yours alone: no other booking is put in it, and the commentary comes from the driver as you go.