Travel is the ultimate luxury but, between the hours and hours of strategizing and researching, it can also be one of the greatest sources of stress. That is where Context Travel comes in. Hosting a global community of experts and explorers spanning more than 60 cities across six continents and conducting over 250,000 tours, Context Travel invites travelers beyond the surface of well-known landmarks and into the fabric of culture, history, and conversation. Perhaps best of all, the highly regarded tour company takes the painstaking work out of the planning process.
Two decades ago, husband-and-wife explorers Paul Bennett and Lani Bevacqua dropped anchor in Rome after a two-year voyage across the Atlantic. What began as a sailing adventure soon transformed into something far greater: a new way of seeing the world. In 2003, the duo founded Context Travel, a venture designed to connect curious travelers with the scholars who know the world’s greatest cities best. In fact, more than 80 percent of Context Travel’s guides hold advanced degrees. However, what truly defines them is their curiosity to learn, question, and uncover stories that rarely make it into guidebooks.
Headed to Europe soon? Here are five can’t-miss Context Travel tours to consider.
Renaissance, Revolution, and Resistance: A Paris History Tour for Teens
For curious young travelers, history becomes far more interesting and less yawn-inducing when experienced firsthand. This private three-hour Content Travel tour transforms Paris into an open-air classroom, where the city’s most storied landmarks reveal tales of revolution, resistance, and rebirth. Guided by a local historian, families embark on a dynamic exploration that brings the past vividly to life and follows the important ethos upheld by Context Travel: travel is the ultimate form of education.
The journey begins beneath the grand dome of the Panthéon, resting place of France’s great thinkers and heroes (like Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Josephine Baker). Here, your expert introduces three defining chapters of French history—the Renaissance, the Revolution, and the Resistance—each unfolding through immersive storytelling. As you wander through the Latin Quarter (that teenage travelers will be delighted to learn is where “Emily in Paris” is filmed) and across the Seine, you may pause at the Palais du Luxembourg, which has served as royal residence, prison, and wartime headquarters.
Along narrow cobblestone streets, stories of hidden Resistance meetings and Revolutionary uprisings breathe new life into the city. Best of all is the private tour is tailored to you and your teens. If there is a particular interest in one aspect or era of French history, the knowledgable guide is happy to explore that topic more in depth. Craving a baguette or a cafe along the way? That can be indulged, as well. Tours start at $565. To book, visit www.contexttravel.com.
Vatican Highlights Tour with Sistine Chapel and Skip-the-Line Tickets
Italy
Few experiences rival the awe of stepping inside the Vatican Museums, home to one of the world’s most extraordinary art collections. Spanning nearly four miles of galleries, the museums hold treasures that trace the evolution of human creativity, from ancient Roman sculpture to the splendor of the Renaissance. On this privately guided express tour experience, curated by local art historians, guests are led on a journey through the Vatican’s most celebrated masterpieces and its lesser-known gems. The experience of visiting the Vatican Museums can be an overwhelming one, especially during the Rome Jubilee (ending Dec. 14), but this Context Travel tour offers the best way to optimize your time and get ahead of the massive lines.
Your expert guide tailors the route to your interests, whether that is exploring the elegance of classical antiquities in the Museo Gregoriano Egizio or tracing the artistic arc from the Middle Ages to the High Renaissance. As you move through grand halls and corridors, the stories of artists, patrons, and popes past and present unfold, breathing life into marble and canvas.
The tour culminates in the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo’s frescoes envelop you. Because speaking is discouraged within the chapel, prior to heading in, the guide may even provide a detailed explainer of what to expect, which aspects of the artwork to keep an eye on, and symbols you may otherwise overlook. Tours start at $165, plus price of Vatican Museum tickets. To book, visit www.contexttravel.com.
VIP Experience: Ecology of Venice Tour by Private Boat
Italy
Beyond its romantic canals and storied palazzos, Venice is home to a lesser-known wonder: the vast, ever-changing lagoon that has shaped the Italian city’s destiny for centuries. On this exclusive three-hour Venice Lagoon Tour, a private marine scientist leads you through the waterways to uncover the delicate balance between nature, history, and modern survival.
Departing from the Arsenal, your private boat glides past salt marshes alive with birdlife and the shimmering seagrass meadows that sustain the lagoon’s fragile ecosystem. As you navigate near the island of Sant’Erasmo and the reconstructed marshes, your Context Travel guide shares insights into the forces of rising tides, shifting coastlines, and the future of coastal resilience. Along the way, discussion turns to MOSE, Venice’s ambitious barrier system designed to protect the city from flooding.
The tour concludes near the fortress of Sant’Andrea, where centuries of subsidence and sea-level rise frame a sobering yet inspiring conversation about climate change and adaptation. This intimate excursion offers a rare, thought-provoking perspective on the lagoon’s beauty and fragility. Tours start at $1,981. To book, visit www.contexttravel.com.
Full-Day Sintra, Cascais, and Cabo da Roca Day Trip from Lisbon
Portugal
Embark on a captivating eight-hour day trip from Lisbon that reveals Portugal’s royal heritage and dramatic coastal beauty. Collected from your hotel in the morning, you’ll travel in comfort with a private Context Travel guide and historian along the scenic route to Sintra, a storybook town of palaces, gardens, and forested hillsides. Your exploration begins at the colorful Pena Palace, a 19th-century masterpiece surrounded by 200 hectares of manicured gardens. As you wander through its lavish interiors, your guide shares tales of the kings and queens who once ruled from these halls.
After exploring Sintra’s historic center, the journey continues toward the sea, tracing a route through Cascais National Park. Pause for a leisurely lunch before arriving at Cabo da Roca, continental Europe’s westernmost point, where rugged cliffs meet the Atlantic beneath Portugal’s oldest lighthouse. On the return drive, enjoy scenic stops at Guincho Beach or in the charming town of Cascais. Tours start at $1,177. To book, visit www.contexttravel.com.
Edinburgh Darkside Tour: Witches, Hauntings, and Body Snatchers
Scotland
The perfect Context Travel tour for visitors traveling during spooky season, this three-hour option spotlights Edinburgh’s haunting beauty and centuries of mystery. Beneath its cobbled lanes and Gothic spires is a city steeped in superstition, where tales of witches, restless spirits, and shadowy histories linger in the mist. As Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote of his hometown, “Only a few inches separate the living from the dead.” This fascinating private walking tour offers an immersive exploration of Scotland’s supernatural past through the lens of history, philosophy, and folklore.
Your guide, a local historian, leads you from St. Giles’ Cathedral, the spiritual heart of the Scottish Reformation, to the eerie underground of Mary King’s Close, once sealed and left to legend. Along the Royal Mile, discover how Enlightenment thought sought to dispel ghostly belief, even as stories of revenants and haunted souls persisted. As the tour continues, Edinburgh Castle, Grassmarket, and Greyfriars Kirkyard, chilling accounts of Major Thomas Weir and George Mackenzie blur the line between myth and memory.
The journey concludes at the National Museum of Scotland, where artifacts like the Arthur’s Seat coffins and a witch’s bridle illuminate the nation’s obsession with the otherworldly. Tours start at $494. To book, visit www.contexttravel.com.