https://substack.com/home/post/p-183457044
Welcome to Bonsy In Tour.
If you’re here for the first time, start with this: I was born and raised in Rome. I studied cultural heritage thinking I’d spend my life in museums… and then I realized my real museum is the city I live in: Rome.
Its streets, its kitchens, its markets. And the masterpieces, more often than not, are on plates.
This Substack is my way of walking you through Rome (and beyond) without the clichés, the stereotypes, or the postcard version of Italy.
I promise to stay away from the usual tropes about Rome and Italy.
Being born in Rome and spending my days walking curious visitors through the city constantly pushes me to find honest, genuine ways to tell what it really means to live in the third most visited city in Europe and the twelfth in the world.
Because yes, for me, taking you around this magnificent open-air museum (or, as the great Roman actor Alberto Sordi once said, “Rome is a great museum, a living room to be crossed on tiptoe”) is both a privilege and a responsibility. If you want a crash course in true romanità, start with his films. “Il Marchese del Grillo” first.
At some point, when you’re born in Rome, beauty becomes domestic.
We Romans stop being surprised if there’s a second-century column around the corner, if we’re eating some food that already existed in the 5th century AD, or if we’re casually walking on sixteenth-century “sanpietrino” volcanic stone blocks (leucitite, perfectly cubed, perfectly Roman).
When I chose to study History and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, it was my way of embracing my city even more deeply. And that’s exactly what I’m lucky enough to do every day through my work.
Small but important disclaimer (and here I need to be precise, with a smile):
I’m a tour escort, not a licensed tour guide.
Which means I won’t quiz you on dates or march you through monuments with a flag raised high. I walk with you. I connect the dots. I translate habits, rituals, food, neighborhoods, and everyday life. Think less lecture, more conversation over lunch.
Rome is a woman. She has grown, changed, and reinvented herself over the centuries. Like any woman, she puts on makeup, changes her hair color, cuts it short, lets it grow again.
She is a mother, a sister, a confidant, a grandmother.
And sometimes, yes, we fight.
But we always make up.
During my food tours, where I guide curious visitors through the city via a carefully curated selection of food, all my studies come full circle. History intertwines with traditions, seasonality, Roman neighborhoods (which are basically small cities inside the big city), and a cultural heritage I have the honor of observing up close.
Every bakery, osteria, rotisserie, deli, fishmonger at this enormous open-air table becomes an unconscious actor in my walks.
And along the way, I teach what we Romans do best: eat, and talk about food while eating.
Cooking classes are the natural extension of my tours.
They tell the intimate, creative, family-driven process behind Roman cooking. In Rome, eating badly simply doesn’t exist. In every kitchen, big or small, modern or old-fashioned, you can expect edible works of art.
In my kitchen, we knead, we laugh, we dance around the stove. Sometimes we sit down to chop vegetables the way my grandmother did. But one thing is certain: you’ll always eat some of the best food of your life.
This Substack is where I share all of that.
Consider it a seat at the table.
Con amore,
Manu