With the dogs
An hour out of Rome there are woods with truffles under them, dogs who know exactly where, and a lunch waiting at the end of the walk.
18 things to book8 placesthe nearest is a 34 min drive from Rome
This is the rare experience that is exactly as good as it sounds. You meet a hunter, usually with two dogs who are visibly more excited about the morning than anybody else present, and you walk into oak woods while they work. When one of them starts digging, everything stops.
The walking is gentle and the whole thing takes a couple of hours. What makes the day is the lunch afterwards — the point of finding truffles being, ultimately, to eat them, and the hunters tend to be attached to a kitchen that knows what to do.
Truffles are seasonal and the season depends on the variety, which is why nobody sensible publishes a calendar. Ring the number on the card; the hunter knows what the woods are doing this week.
What you are buying is access to somebody else's twenty years. A hunter knows which slope holds water, which oaks have produced before, and what the dog is telling him from the set of her tail — none of which is written down anywhere and none of which you could find on your own. The walk is the least of it.
The two hunting grounds within reach of Rome are the Sabina, north-east up the Tiber valley, and the Alban hills right on the edge of the city. Both are oak country. The Sabina days tend to be longer and end at a farm table; the Castelli ones are close enough to be a morning, which makes them the ones to book if you have half a day rather than a whole one.
Come dressed for wet ground and be prepared to be slower than the dog. Otherwise there is nothing to prepare: the hunter brings the animals, the tools and the knowledge, and somebody else does the cooking.
Every truffle day in the catalogue, closest first. Most include the lunch, and the lunch is not a sandwich — several of these are sold as a hunt plus a seven or eight course meal built around what came out of the ground. A couple end with you cooking it yourself instead.
Closest to Rome first. Never by who pays us.
With your handsAbout two hours of truffle hunting in the hills with the truffle dogs, then a seven-course truffle lunch at the host's home with wine from his own production.
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With your handsMetro C to the end of the line, two hours hunting, then a seven-course lunch.
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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 truffle hunt in the woods with an experienced hunter and his trained dogs, on a farm in Torri in Sabina that also breeds truffle dogs.
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With your handsA truffle hunting outing followed by a tasting lunch, run by a truffle association based in Rieti that also holds technical sessions on truffle cultivation.
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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.
See the dayThe Sabina, the Alban hills and the Rieti valley: oak country, and also wine and olive country. If you are driving out for the morning, this is what is nearby for the afternoon — a Frascati cellar, a mill, a harvest day in season, or the sulphur pools in the hills behind.
Best fit for this section first, then whatever you can book today. Closest to Rome breaks a tie. Never by who pays us.
On two wheelsThirty minutes from Termini by train, then six hours through Frascati vineyards.
€89 per person
Books on Bicycl-e
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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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In the hot waterSulphur pools open till 18:30, and the operator publishes the train to get there.
€12 per person
Books on Terme Sabine di Cretone
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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 private visit that starts in the vineyard and ends in the eighteenth-century rooms of the estate, led by a dedicated sommelier or by the owners.
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With your handsA guided tour of a Frascati winery built around a 16th-century villa, including the vineyards and the historic volcanic cave used as a cellar, followed by a tasting.
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With your handsA family estate on the edge of Frascati that makes Frascati wine and extra-virgin olive oil and has a page of its own devoted to events and tastings, alongside pages on the cell…
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With your handsA walk through the vineyard, then the cellar and the barrel room of an organic Frascati estate, ending with a guided tasting of four De Sanctis wines.
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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 handsThe short version: fifteen minutes by train to Tor Vergata, five on foot to the farmhouse, a walk among the vines with views back towards Rome, and three Frascati wines paired w…
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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 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…
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
The day stays yours: you leave when you want, stop where you want, and come back when the light goes.
Affiliate link — you pay their price, never more, and they pay us. You book with Localrent, and anything about that booking goes through them.
See prices on LocalrentNo parking to find, no wrong turns, and you leave when the day is done.
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 PickupsDifferent truffles have different seasons and the woods do not read calendars — the black summer truffle and the prized winter ones are months apart. The hunters run days across much of the year and know week by week; their phone number is on each card.
The dogs usually do, and that is what you are paying for — an experienced hunter working ground he knows. Nobody can promise a find, and any operator who does is telling you something about themselves.
Gentle. Woodland, a couple of hours, at the pace of a dog who is concentrating. Sturdy shoes rather than boots for most of the year.
Very. There are dogs, there is digging, and there is a treasure hunt with a real prize. Check the minimum age on the card where one is given.
In the Sabina hills north-east of the city, in the Alban hills half an hour south, and around Rieti. All three are oak country, which is what truffles want. The grid above is every hunt we have found, closest first.
The walk itself is a couple of hours at the dog's pace. With the lunch that most of them include, the day runs to four or five hours — which is why it works as a morning out of Rome and not as something squeezed between two other things.
That is the operator's call and it varies, so ask when you book. What every one of these days does include is eating them: the standard shape is hunt, then a table, and the truffle goes on the food in front of you.
It is one of the better group days out of Rome, because everybody is doing the same walk and the meal at the end holds the whole thing together. Tell them the number when you ring: the kitchen cooks for who was expected.
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