Walks of Italy is an American-owned and operated walking tour

Walking tour

Walking tour may be defined has having one or more of the following characteristics:* A full or partial-day tour of one or more tourist destinations, which can be led by a tour guide, an escort, or be self-guided....

 company specializing in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. It was founded in 2008 by Jason Spiehler, tour guide

Tour guide

A tour guide provides assistance, information and cultural, historical and contemporary heritage interpretation to people on organized tours, individual clients, educational establishments, at religious and historical sites, museums, and at venues of other significant interest...

 and art historian with a Master's degree from Yale in historical theology, and recommended by name in the New York Times travel section Jason and his organization have been featured in the Rick Steves guidebook series (esteemed writer of America's top-selling Europe guidebooks and a travel writer for CNN) on Rome, Italy & Best of Europe since 2009. It was noted as a walking tour worth watching after its appearance at the 2010 Las Vegas Luxury Travel Expo. The company offers an array of walking tours in the major tourist areas in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, as well as several off-the-beaten-path tours.

In April 2011, Walks of Italy worked in partnership with Showtime's "The Borgias"

The Borgias (2011 TV series)

The Borgias is a 2011 historical fiction television series created by Neil Jordan.The series is based on the Borgia family, an Italian dynasty of Spanish origin, and stars Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI with David Oakes, François Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and Aidan Alexander as Juan, Cesare,...

 television series to provide a grand prize sweepstakes winner a Borgia family-themed tour of Rome, custom-made for the show's viewers.

Tours

Walks of Italy provides historical and thematic full-day and half-day walking tours of important Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 tourist destinations, specifically areas significant to Italian and Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 art history

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

, archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

, culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 and antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

. They specialize in small group and private walking tours, and operate 12 months a year. Tours meet at several central locations in major Italian cities and range between two to seven hours long. The guides are selected by Jason Spiehler and are a mixture of local Italian guides and expert foreign expatriates. They are featured within the Top 25 "attractions" for Rome on independent aggregate review site Tripadvisor.com

See also

• Archaeological tourism
  Archaeological tourism
  Archaeotourism or Archaeological tourism is a form of cultural tourism, which aims to promote public interest in archaeology and the conservation of historical sites...
  
  
• Cultural tourism
  Cultural tourism
  Cultural tourism is the subset of tourism concerned with a country or region's culture, specifically the lifestyle of the people in those geographical areas, the history of those peoples, their art, architecture, religion, and other elements that helped shape their way of life...
  
  
• Heritage tourism
  Heritage tourism
  Cultural heritage tourism is a branch of tourism oriented towards the cultural heritage of the location where tourism is occurring...
  
  
• Guided tours
• Tour operator
  Tour operator
  A tour operator typically combines tour and travel components to create a holiday. The most common example of a tour operator's product would be a flight on a charter airline plus a transfer from the airport to a hotel and the services of a local representative, all for one price. Niche tour...
  
  
• Tour guides
• Walking tours