Food
Almost everything Romans eat is made in the countryside around the city, and you can spend a day where it happens.
50 things to book30 placesthe nearest is in Rome itself
The food of Lazio is a countryside food that moved into the city: sheep's cheese from the Sabina hills, buffalo mozzarella from the reclaimed marshland south of Rome, olive oil from the Tiber valley, wild greens, freshwater fish from the lakes, and pasta shapes that change every twenty kilometres. Most of it is still made where it always was, at farms and dairies that will show you.
This is the most bookable part of the whole catalogue, because a farm that feeds people already knows how to take a reservation. What is on this page: classes where you cook, visits where you watch and taste, harvests you can join at the right time of year, and meals worth driving for.
The way to use this page is to decide whether you want to make something, watch something being made, or eat. They are three different days. A cooking class is three or four hours with your hands in flour and a meal at the end. A dairy or a mill visit is an hour or two and a tasting. A farm lunch is an afternoon. The mistake is booking two of them on the same day and arriving at the second one full.
Season decides more here than anywhere else on the site. The grape harvest runs through September and into October, the olive harvest from late October into December, and truffles move with the variety and the weather. Those are the days you cannot have at any other time of year, and they are the reason to check the cards for the operator's own window before fixing a date.
One thing worth saying about what you will eat. Lazio's cooking is not the refined half of Italian food — it is offal, sheep's cheese, bitter greens, bread that was stale on purpose, and four pasta sauces built out of pork fat, pepper and cheese. It is very good and it is not shy. The farms that will teach you are teaching you that, not a version of it arranged for visitors.
Hands in the flour. Pasta by hand in a farmhouse kitchen, the four Roman sauces in an afternoon, bread, pizza — usually in a countryside kitchen with a table at the end of it.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
With your handsMake the pasta at a Frascati winery: 22 minutes by train, picked up at the station.
€109 per person
Books on farmexperiencestours.com
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With your handsThey collect you at your Rome hotel; you come back having made lunch by hand.
€250 per person
Books on Villa Proietti
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With your handsAn organic estate on the hills at Frascati working the native Frascati DOCG grapes — Malvasia del Lazio, Greco Bianco, Bombino.
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With your handsFifteen minutes by train from Rome: a walk through the vineyard with a local guide, then a hands-on class where you cook traditional Frascati dishes and the local wine cookies w…
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With your handsA guided walk through the historic centre of Frascati tasting slow-roasted pork and jug wine, then a pizza lesson with a master pizzaiolo: you make your own, eat it with antipas…
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With your handsThe estate offers a visit that covers the vineyards, the production philosophy and the winemaking, and can be combined with the secrets of Roman cooking.
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With your handsA hands-on day with Chef Davide at Tivoli: making fresh pasta, tasting local wine and eating what has been cooked.
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With your handsA walk to gather wild herbs on a farm at Collevecchio, followed by a class on how to cook them and a tasting of the dishes.
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With your handsA three-hour terracotta workshop in the studio of the artist Martino Antocchi: mixing clay, learning basic modelling, making natural engobe colours and burnishing with olive oil…
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With your handsThe wider class of the same school: choose handmade pasta, the four Roman classics done properly with guanciale and Pecorino Romano, or Tuscia dishes like suppli' al telefono an…
See the dayBuffalo dairies on the Pontine plain, sheep's cheese in the Sabina hills. Morning milking, curd, and a tasting of things that were liquid an hour earlier.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
With your handsBe there for the 8:30 milking and the 9:00 curd: the timetable is the tour.
€15 per person
Books on agricolacirce.it
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With your handsThe estate sits in an eighteenth-century casale on a hill at Monte Porzio Catone, thirty hectares of Frascati DOCG vineyard in front and the skyline of Rome beyond.
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With your handsA Sabina DOP oil producer that opens its mill and its centuries-old groves to visitors with a tasting.
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With your handsA longer day at the farm: the history of the estate and its year-round organic methods, an extended tasting of a range of Italian oils, and lunch.
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With your handsA family farm below Caprarola on the Cimini hills that grows hazelnuts and makes creams, spreads, mostarde and biscuits in its own laboratory.
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With your handsThe longer version of the Trebotti tour: vineyards, olive grove, Etruscan tomb and cellar, then a tasting of seven wines with a selection of Tuscia cheeses and a menu of local p…
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With your handsTasting inside the cellar of a Montefiascone estate, with the winery's award-winning wines served alongside regional cheeses and cured meats.
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With your handsA working farm inside Rome, ten minutes from the Appia Antica park, with hectares of cultivated land and farm animals.
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With your handsAbout two hours led by the brewer or one of the partners: a walk through the hop rows and the fields, the brewery itself, and a guided tasting of three beers chosen on the day a…
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With your handsParticipants pick edible flowers — cultivated organically on the farm and wild ones in season — and turn them into two preparations, between drinks and cooked dishes, depending …
See the dayThe Sabina has been pressing oil since before Rome mattered, and between late October and December you can pick with the family that owns the trees and eat what comes off the press the same day.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
With your handsA walk through the olive groves, a visit to the olive mill and a tasting session, run by a Sabina oil producer.
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With your handsA walk among DOP Sabina and IGP Olio di Roma olive trees where a technician explains the native cultivars, then the mill where the extraction is shown step by step, and finally …
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With your handsA hands-on day picking olives in the Sabina hills, followed by sorting and selecting the fruit to be sent for milling.
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With your handsA walk through an organic olive grove with the farmer, covering the farming year from pruning to harvest, then an interactive tasting of four Italian extra virgin olive oils led…
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With your handsAn evening at an organic olive farm in the Sabina: a walk through the grove, a guided tasting of the farm's oils and a light supper with olive oil pairings and drinks.
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With your handsA guided walk through the organic olive grove followed by an interactive tasting of four Italian extra virgin olive oils, led by an olive oil sommelier.
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With your handsA walk through themed gardens and organic olive groves at Collevecchio, ending with a tasting of the farm's oil and local products under a large olive tree.
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With your handsAn advanced tasting session led by an official tasting panel recognised by the Italian ministry of agriculture, ending in the tasting room at Castelnuovo di Farfa.
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With your handsA proper tasting course, not a sales pitch, run by Cristina Falcinelli — a professional taster of olive oil and table olives and a member of UMAO, the Mediterranean union of oil…
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With your handsA ten-hour day out of Rome with a private driver: your choice between Caprarola with the Farnese palace or Sutri with the Roman amphitheatre and Etruscan necropolis, then an oli…
See the dayA dog, a wood, and two hours of following it. The truffle days near Rome are real hunts with real dogs, and they finish at a table.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
With your handsMeet at the station, follow the dog into the wood, dig up what it finds.
€72 per person
Books on Farm Experiences & Tours
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With your handsA private, appointment-only tour of a hillside estate 25 minutes from Orvieto, where wine has been made since 1212.
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With your handsA truffle hunt in the estate's own woods with the dogs, followed by a cellar tour, a cooking class and a meal in the tasting room using what was dug up.
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With your handsA morning in the apiary inside the Veio regional park: watching how the bees live and work, then a guided tasting of several honeys, millefiori, chestnut and honeydew, led by th…
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With your handsA beekeeper opens the hives and explains how the colony is organised and how honey is made, in an apiary inside the Parco Regionale dei Castelli Romani.
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With your handsEach participant is given fresh herbs in spring and summer, dried ones in autumn and winter, and hears the history and uses of each.
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With your handsA short course on recognising, gathering and cooking wild edible plants, held at the Le Erbe della Luna farm by Lake Nemi.
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With your handsA walk through fields and woods with Massimo, a grower, to see the three kinds of strawberry grown at Nemi — the wild one, the everbearing one and the fragolone.
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With your handsA sensory walk through the farm's cultivated and wild medicinal herbs, then each participant picks a selection and blends tisanes with the grower — separating functional blends …
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With your handsA visit to a working medicinal-herb farm in which the plants are met through all five senses — smelled, touched, and tasted straight from the field — with a tasting of the farm'…
See the dayDays where the point is the meal: farm lunches, tasting menus, dinners in places you would not find on your own.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
With your handsA driver meets you at Frascati station, takes you to a sixteenth-century family vineyard for a tasting of three boutique wines with snacks, then a guided walk through Frascati a…
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With your handsPick-up at Frascati station at half past four, a tasting of three Frascati wines with local snacks at the farmhouse vineyard, then a guided walk through the historic centre and …
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With your handsA family winery on the Amerino hills, working since 1960, with a published price list that starts at €5 for two wines and climbs to a vertical of five vintages of the same label.
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With your handsThree hours that pair a walk in the vineyards and a cellar tour with a tasting lunch served in the Barricaia, four cru wines and a seasonal menu built from the estate's own vege…
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With your handsA fixed-menu lunch or dinner of Ciociaria dishes - antipasto, first course, main with a side, fruit and dessert - with four matched glasses of the estate's biodynamic wine, wate…
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With your handsA bistrot two steps from Piazza della Libertà, run by the team behind the Michelin-starred Sintesi.
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With your handsA seven-course menu at Sintesi, a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Ariccia, built around seasonality, fermentation and technique.
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With your handsTwo tastings in the historic rooms of a hunting lodge that belonged to the Colonna family, followed by a plated dinner.
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With your handsA tasting menu at the restaurant inside the Pileum winery in Piglio, in five or seven courses, with an optional pairing of three of the estate's wines.
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With your handsThe weekend version of the Pileum cellar tour: a visit to the vineyard and cellar followed by a five-course tasting menu in the estate restaurant with three wines.
See the dayDriving time from the middle of Rome, on the road network and without traffic. It tells you whether the day stands up; it is not a timetable.
Getting there
There is wine at the end of this one. Somebody else driving is not a luxury here.
Affiliate link — you pay their price, never more, and they pay us. You book with Welcome Pickups, and anything about that booking goes through them.
See prices on Welcome PickupsLate October to early December, and it moves with the weather each year. Farms that take part in it publish their dates late — the activity page carries whatever the operator has said, with the date we read it.
Many of them do, and the group and age information on each activity page comes from what the operator states. Where it matters, phone them — most of these are family businesses and they will tell you straight away.
In the countryside rather than the city: farmhouse kitchens around Frascati and the Castelli, in the Tivoli countryside, in the Sabina and up in the Tuscia. Most are three to four hours and end with you eating what you made, and a good number run in English.
Pecorino romano from the hills, buffalo mozzarella from the plain south of Rome, olive oil from the Sabina, porchetta from Ariccia, the four Roman pasta sauces, artichokes, and freshwater fish from the crater lakes. Almost all of it is made within an hour of the city.
Yes — several estates open both to visitors and sell them as a day where you pick. The grape harvest is September into October and the olive harvest late October into December, and both move with the weather. The cards carry the operator's own dates with the day we read them.
Many are, and the cheese, oil, bread, pasta and honey days obviously so. Where it matters, ring: these are family businesses, the number is on the card, and they will tell you straight away rather than checking with a head office.
Yes, for anything where somebody cooks or where milk has to be there. A shop or a farm gate is usually walk-in. Each card says which it is and carries the operator's own booking route or phone number.
It is one of the best days there is with them — there is a job to do, an animal somewhere nearby, and food at a predictable time. The dairies and the pasta-making days are the two that work at almost any age.
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