Dolce Vita Tour in Rome — But You Do the Driving

Mechanically they are identical — only the colour differs. You can say which one you would like when you book.

There is a version of Rome that people come here looking for. It has an open car in it, a small one, and a road with nobody on it. It has sunglasses and a scarf, a hill above the city, and a light that only happens for about forty minutes a day.

It is a film, of course. Fellini shot it in 1960 and the whole world has been trying to stand inside it ever since.

Plenty of companies in Rome will sell you that picture. Almost all of them will put you in the back seat, with a driver in front and a fixed route around the centre. You get the photograph. You do not get the drive.

We do it the other way round.

The car is yours for the afternoon

Primo Giro rents open electric Méhari — the shape you recognise from every Italian summer photograph, built new and with a battery underneath. They are not restored classics, and we would rather tell you than let you find out: nothing on board is fifty years old except the idea. No clutch, no gearstick, no engine noise. If you have ever driven an automatic, you already know how.

You take the keys a five-minute walk from the Colosseum and you go. Nobody sits beside you telling you when to stop. Nobody has an itinerary to keep to but you.

Where the Dolce Vita actually is

It is not in the traffic around Piazza Venezia. It starts about twenty minutes out, in three places.

The Appian Way. The original Roman road, basalt stones two thousand years old, mausoleums and umbrella pines on both sides and almost no traffic. This is the drive people picture when they picture Italy.

The Park of the Aqueducts. Ancient arches marching across open fields to the horizon, with nothing modern in the frame. Ten minutes from the Appian Way, and the light in the late afternoon is the reason we finish there.

The Roman Castelli Romani. The hill towns south of the city — Frascati for the wine, Castel Gandolfo above Lake Albano, Tusculum for the ruins with all of Rome laid out below. This is the full day, and it is the one that stays with people.

What comes with the car

A printed road book: the route, the timings, where to pull over, which viewpoints photograph well at which hour, and where Romans actually eat rather than where visitors are sent. Follow it or ignore it.

The car has seat belts and takes child seats. If it rains, we fit the full weather enclosure and you go out in the same car. If you would rather not start from Via Labicana, we can bring the car to your hotel in Rome and collect it there afterwards, as an extra.

One thing we will not pretend about: the historic centre is a restricted traffic zone, and our route deliberately goes the other way — out through the Aurelian Walls and into open country. That is not a limitation, it is the point. Here is how Rome's ZTL works, so you know what you are avoiding.

Practical things worth knowing

A full category B licence, held for at least a year. Minimum age 21. If your licence was issued outside the European Union you will need an International Driving Permit alongside it — straightforward to get, but it has to be done before you travel.

Half a day on the Appian Way and the Aqueducts, or a full day out in the Castelli Romani. Prices are per car rather than per person: from €250 for the half day and €390 for the full day, with a supplement for the third and fourth seat. Up to four people.

The difference, in one line

A chauffeured Dolce Vita tour gives you the photograph. This one gives you the afternoon.