How the Elite See Rome

A famous entertainer would like to have the Colosseum to herself for a small evening event—anything you can do? A visitor on a layover hopes to see a privately owned Caravaggio behind the walls of a Roman palazzo—what about tonight? A traveler wants to make railway excursions from Rome in a train car with no other passengers—can that be arranged?Explore the August 2026 IssueCheck out more from this issue and find your next story to read.View MoreFulvio De Bonis finds a way to say yes to challenges such as these, which fall somewhere between logistical quandary and diplomatic démarche. His boutique travel company, Imago Artis—which he co-founded and runs with his wife, Alessia Tortora, and their longtime friend Chiara Di Muoio—can provide access to almost anything in Rome, and it specializes in devising unusual itineraries for people of means. Fulvio’s cellphone connects with curators and clerics, bellhops and grandees—the phone is his wand, enabling a seemingly frictionless glide through a labyrinthine city. I met Fulvio several years ago through a friend at the Vatican Museums, and since then I’ve accompanied him around the city more than once, curious about the work he does. During my visits to Rome, we’ve become friends.On a bright morning several months ago, he asked to meet outside the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian, near the Forum. There was something he wanted to show me. I had a few minutes to wait, and took in one of the basilica’s high exterior walls, whose brickwork goes back to ancient times and had once formed the interior wall of a now-vanished structure. In the early third century C.E., an engraved map of Rome had been secured to this wall—you can still see indentations where iron clamps held marble slabs. The slabs were broken apart for building material during the Middle Ages; fragments have been resurfacing ever since, like puzzle pieces from a couch. A thousand or so have been found, representing perhaps 10 percent of the original—they’re laid out on the floor of a small museum less than a mile away. I’ve always wondered if a fragment will ever turn up with a red arrow and the words Hic es, “You are here.

”No one is quite sure exactly what the purpose of the Marble Plan was, though visitors to the city in antiquity—and there were many—would have needed some sort of guidance. The big complaint about Rome today is that it is crowded with tourists, but it has always been crowded with tourists. Rome without tourists would be like Venice without water or Manhattan without noise. In imperial times, visitors could avail themselves of guidebooks explaining where to find, for instance, the original hut of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. Other cities in the Roman empire maintained offices in the Forum to help any of their citizens visiting the capital. A monograph published a few years ago shows pictures of the souvenirs you could buy in Rome and take home to Ephesus or Alexandria: little bronze figures of gladiators, say, or glassware with local scenes depicted in relief—not much different from what you can buy now. As its earthly power dwindled and the city’s population declined from 1 million to perhaps 20,000, Rome became a destination for religious pilgrims. They far outnumbered local inhabitants, arriving by the hundreds of thousands in the jubilee year 1300.I saw Fulvio coming my way, waving from a distance as he talked on the phone. He is tall, curving like a floor lamp to offer an embrace. Early on, the color of his hair gave Fulvio the nickname Rosso. Now he is 47, and the red is streaked with grigio. He is energetic and talkative; the espresso he drinks all day long may even slow him down a bit. I’d been guessing there was something about the Marble Plan that Fulvio wanted to explain, but that wasn’t so. He led the way down the street and made a quick call as we walked.Benedetta Ristori for The AtlanticFulvio De Bonis in the OratorioMoments later, a caretaker opened an unmarked door in an unremarkable building and led us down a staircase. At the bottom, the floor became marble. A warren of rooms and passages led eventually to the nave of a church, which had taken over the interior of a Roman temple. For five centuries, it has served as the sacral headquarters—the private guild church—of Rome’s confraternity of apothecaries.

A piece of paper signed by Raphael was on display behind protective glass: a receipt for a prescription. The rear of the nave was dominated by a pair of battered green wooden doors, 15 feet high.Fulvio can be a showman. He positioned a chair in front of the doors and asked me to sit. His attitude was expectant and playful, like Tom Hanks starting out on the piano keys in Big. When I was settled to his satisfaction, he and the caretaker pulled the doors apart.An American friend of mine who lived in Rome for 70 years always maintained that he was “just passing through,” which is what everyone in Rome is doing, whether they acknowledge it or not. The city makes everything else seem mutable and transient by comparison. But one common thread down the ages has been the profession of cicerone, the learned guide who takes visitors by the hand. The satirist Lucian wrote about them in antiquity. Grand Tour travelers described them in letters and journals. During their Italian idyll in Brideshead Revisited, Charles and Sebastian rely on a diminutive gentleman “to whom all doors were open.” Today there are more ciceroni in Rome than ever. The most accomplished of them embody some combination of Virgil, Vasari, and Tenzing Norgay, with hints of Lupin and Martha Stewart.Imago Artis occupies the pinnacle of the “luxury-travel space” in Rome, serving the kinds of clients you’d expect—Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, Mike Tyson, Katy Perry, Aaron Judge, Jimmy Fallon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Viola Davis—as well as people who are not household names. The company is discreet, and does not talk publicly about prices. Some of the individual experiences it offers may cost only a few hundred euros; some, such as having a major museum to yourself, run as high as 15,000. Many celebrities don’t mind being identified as clients. Imago says nothing more, though Fulvio did comment once on what a lover of books Mike Tyson seemed to be. The boxer had read Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Kierkegaard. He had read the letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Fulvio and Tyson spent much of their time together talking about a biography of Alexander the Great.

Imago’s founders met 25 years ago as art-history students at La Sapienza, Rome’s oldest university. They soon faced an inevitable question: What do you do with a degree in art history? Chiara took on a variety of roles at Castel Sant’Angelo, the imperial tomb turned papal fortress, now a museum, on the banks of the Tiber. Fulvio and Alessia, not yet married, found work at a hotel in London—she as a server in the restaurant and bar, he as the night manager. Fulvio’s English needed improvement: When he first started, a guest called down for a new TV remote and Fulvio brought him toilet paper. The night-manager job sharpened his language skills and also his understanding of how people behave when they think no one is looking.About this experience Fulvio ventured few specifics, even when I tried a subtle word-association game. (“Russians?”) He said simply, “At a hotel, the world changes after 10 p.m.” As Fulvio watched from the front desk, every night brought fresh awareness of the role played by a hotel’s concierge: the basic Jeeves function, to be sure, but also minister of culture, security adviser, intelligence czar, linguist, therapist, solicitor, medic, dietitian, enabler, enforcer. Hotel concierges, he realized, need all the help they can get.Back in Rome, Fulvio and his friends went into business, focusing on the minister-of-culture opportunity. All three of them could talk fluently about art and had contacts in the worlds of art and archaeology. They went to concierges at the best hotels with an offer: Here are a few special tours we can provide; we’ll work one-on-one with your guests; call anytime and we can take some of the burden off your shoulders. The business was incubated at the St. Regis in 2006, and as word spread, Imago designed specialty programs exclusive to other hotels as well.Benedetta Ristori for The AtlanticThe Imago Artis founders Chiara Di Muoio, Fulvio De Bonis, and Alessia TortoraThe secret to the company’s success lies in its network of “partners”—museums and churches and palazzi, but also artists and photographers and scholars. Each has something special to offer if they can be persuaded to provide it.

The arrangements are sometimes financial—many cultural institutions in Rome need support—but just as often they are based on long-standing relationships. The business grew. Every year, Imago trained more guides speaking more languages; most of the guides had academic specialties. Imago also began taking more and more bespoke requests, offering a rapid-response service: You want what? Okay, we’ll see what we can do. An hour at Villa Borghese after it closes tonight. Access to the Jewish catacombs tomorrow morning. White truffles from Piedmont delivered to Rome by dinnertime.The company employs a professional staff of 50—they underlie the seemingly in Fulvio’s frictionless glide. To this, add an array of regular vendors: owners of farms and wineries and aircraft and boats. Supplicants turn up at Imago seeking a place on the contact list. At the office one day I met a delegation from an estate in the Alban Hills bearing bushels of edible flowers (with wine pairings).Central to all operations in Rome is a fleet of 20 tinted-glass sedans and SUVs. Before any expedition, the drivers conduct a dry run, even if it’s just across town. “All roads lead to Rome,” a renowned urban planner observed years ago, “but once you get there they turn into spaghetti.” Every car is a command module, a magic carpet, a bolt-hole. The drivers are skilled. They can implement decoy procedures to evade paparazzi. They can get out of tight spots. I rode with one driver on a narrow track that wriggled up the Palatine Hill between ancient stone walls. For a quarter mile, the collision-avoidance screen on the dashboard warned of a screeching contact that never occurred.We’d been heading for the Church of San Bonaventura, on a secluded spur overlooking the Colosseum, home to half a dozen young Franciscan friars—soccer gear was strewn about the hallways—and a few older ones, including the Brazilian artist Sidival Fila. Roadways around the Forum are controlled by soldiers and police, so getting up the hill meant negotiating a checkpoint. I’d witnessed this kind of moment with Fulvio before: a window rolled down, a gesture, a quiet word, and on we go.