Our Difference

... and that's been true since the beginning. Context was founded in 2003 by Paul Bennett and Lani Bevacqua, a husband and wife who landed in Rome after two years spent sailing across the Atlantic.

In Rome, they fell in with an eclectic circle of professors and specialists — architects, native Romans, researchers, writers, archaeologists — and built Context to connect those experts directly with travelers who wanted more than a guided walk.

Now, 20+ years and over 250,000 tours later, we've grown from a single city into a network of scholars, nerds, and curious travelers spanning 80+ cities across six continents. Someone once called us "affable weirdos." We're still not sure we've been paid a better compliment.

We run this business on a simple belief: travel should make us defenders of a place, not a cause of its wear. Done sustainably, travel can benefit the visitor and the visited in equal measure.

To give something "context" is to connect the dots between eras, geographies, and cultures — to weave them into one shared narrative. That's the job on every tour: not just point at a Baroque façade, but explain how the rivalry between Bernini and Borromini reshaped how we think about genius. Not just walk a boulevard, but show how Haussmann's renovation of Paris still defines how cities are planned today. Not just taste the food, but dig into the cultural history that makes Singaporean street cuisine so distinct.

Welcome. We're glad you're curious too.