Tour Guiding in Rome

A Great Summer Job

By Rebecca Falkoff

Last year, when I realized that teaching English would not get me through the warm months in Rome, I picked up a copy of Wanted in Rome, a biweekly English-language magazine, and read that the cultural association Walks of Rome was hiring native English speakers to work as tour guides.

In my first months in Rome I had lived in the city but not studied it. Circus Maximus, to me, was a good place to go for a jog. But after my interview with Walks of Rome, I went down to the Colosseum to follow a tour. The tour was informative and fun, spliced with etymologies and jokes. I decided to study the 15-page script because I was becoming more and more interested in Roman history.

After some extra research I decided I was ready to lead a practice tour with five tourists and an evaluator from Walks of Rome. I was nervous and the tour was disastrous, but I got the job anyway, and eventually I began to improve and started to have a lot more fun.

There were about 15 of us from English-speaking countries around the world. After work, we often went out for pizza together, sharing the jokes we included in our tours and little-known facts we had discovered about Rome. Although we all started with the same scripts, each of us developed tours that reflected our own personalities.

Getting to know other tour guides and learning about Roman history were not the only perks of being a tour guide: as our tours got better, we started to make piles and piles of money! Because the tours were free, we received generous tips. In addition, Walks of Rome gave us "appreciation" bonuses when people from our tours went on other tours.

Rome's network of cultural associations and free tours is unusual. Since the informational walks are free, no work visa is necessary. In other cities stricter legislation prohibits gathering makeshift groups of tourists and giving such informational walks. In Paris, for example, the native speakers of English who give tours with Paris Walking Tours are licensed tour guides with working papers.

I loved working in Rome, amidst the chaos of the young gypsies who prey on tourists, the gladiators who pose for photographs, the tour guides who wave their umbrellas, and the umbrella vendors who run from the undercover cops as they all encircle the Colosseum in what seems like a timeless Roman dance of greed, corruption, and passion.

If you're interested in leading tours in Rome, go to the Colosseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, or Saint Peter's Square and talk to the people giving free promotional tours.

REBECCA FALKOFF is a freelance writer and English teacher currently living in Paris. She writes a monthly column for the Monster.com Work Abroad Community. She spent the last 10 months in Rome, and is currently writing a novel about the year of the Jubilee.