City tours have stepped up their game—these are Europe’s most exciting

There was a time when a perfunctory potter round the key sites with a dusty guide serviced by an even dustier script was the summit of our city-tour ambitions. Now, driven by a new breed of innovative and passionate advocates eager to exalt their home towns, the choice is boundless. Whether you’re looking to scratch the surface of a destination or really get under its skin, you won’t struggle to find a tour as unique, compelling and fun as the guides who lead them. Here, we celebrate a selection of the latter — from a retired policeman on a very different beat in London to a Barcelona ‘sightjogger’ and a kayaker offering an unusual take on the City of Bridges.

Kayak tour of Venice with Ginevra Testa

Visitors to Venice have been getting out on the water for centuries. But while the cliche features a strapping gondolier, a glass or two of something chilled and some weighty expectations of romance, the waterborne craft in which Ginevra Testa plies her trade are somewhat different. The 26-year-old guides her guests around the labyrinthine waterways of the city of her birth in one- or two-person kayaks. Romance is in short supply (no one looks good in a spray skirt and watershoes). But other than that, the tours couldn’t be more in tune with Venice’s character.

“What I love is the different perspective the tours offer,” says Ginevra, who’s one of seven guides working for Venice Kayak. Groups are limited to six people, so there’s plenty of contact with each individual, and tours run in the late afternoon and early evening. “During the day, it’s all about seeing the architecture of Venice and the extraordinary buildings. Meanwhile, the evening tour is much more about the colours in the sky and the reflections off the water,” says Ginevra. “It can be so beautiful — it’s not uncommon to have people in tears.”

Venice wasn’t always the ‘City of Bridges’ — early settlers in the lagoon had no choice but to travel by boat between its 100-plus islands. In that respect, the 2.5-hour kayak tours offer a return to its original spirit. Working with the gondolas — and the gondoliers who expertly and theatrically propel them — is all in a day’s work. Over recent years, a mutual understanding has developed, with the gondoliers recognising that the kayak tours might include inexperienced paddlers, and thus giving them a wide berth; and the kayak guides sensitive to the fact that flailing paddles aren’t the most welcome addition to a gondola selfie. Both groups are united against what many feel is the principal scourge of Venice’s waterways — the wash-generating, sediment-displacing motorboats.

While this most fragile of urban environments benefits from the low-impact tourism that kayaking tours offer, participants can enjoy something that Venice certainly isn’t awash with: freedom of movement. The tiny walkways, elegant bridges and cobbled streets around in-demand sites such as the Grand Canal, St Mark’s Basilica and the Teatro La Fenice place a premium on sharp elbows; afloat, the pace is less hurried and more serene.

“It’s much closer to the experience you would have as someone who lives here year-round,” says Ginevra. “The biggest change during my lifetime is that Venice has become… faster. People dashing around, ticking off the main sites and landmarks. With our tours, you’re exploring hidden waterways and getting the chance to hear, see and admire more of the real Venice at the right pace.”

It’s a symbiotic process. As Ginevra is showing off her city to visitors, unseen corners are revealing themselves to her. “I thought I knew everything about Venice,” she says. “But doing this job, it makes me fall in love with it all over again.”

From €110 (£94) per person.

Running tour of Barcelona with Mattia Giannini

Escaping a nine-to-five, desk-bound existence was Mattia Giannini’s motivation for lacing up his trainers and becoming a running-tour guide. Now he finds himself working for just a few hours each morning — and his office is one of the world’s most breathlessly invigorating cities: Barcelona.

Tours start early; all the better for avoiding the rising temperatures and touristic tide that can engulf the Catalan capital later in the day, particularly in high summer. But the early starts are no penance. “It’s such a beautiful time of day in Barcelona,” says the 31-year-old. There’s a soft light illuminating the Gaudí masterpieces, such as La Pedrera and Casa Batlló. The skeletal frames of the retro-funfair rides high on Mount Tibidabo lie dormant. And the arc of golden sand of La Barceloneta beach is specked with just a handful of early risers.

“The weather in Barcelona is great all year round, so there’s really no reason not to be active,” says Mattia. He offers a range of distances on his sight-jogging tours, from 5km to 21km — the latter popular with visitors prepping for marathons or half marathons. The 10km is the most popular; Mattia is proud of the route he’s mapped out for this, claiming it shows clients “80% of the highlights of the city” in double-quick time, providing a great foundation for later exploration. With keen runners, the 10km might only last an hour. Others will take considerably longer. But the golden rule is: no one gets left behind.

“I sometimes get clients who say ‘yeah, I can run 10km or 21km’ and then it transpires that they’re not really in the shape for it. If that happens, then I make a plan; we either walk for sections, cut short the distance or I’ve sometimes grabbed one of the city bikes that you can rent and got them on one of those so they don’t miss out. As I always say, ‘you’re here to have fun — there’s no point in dying to see Barcelona!”

Trail-running isn’t really Mattia’s thing, so for clients keen to explore the paths and trails around Montjuïc, a focal point for the transformative 1992 Olympic Games, and further afield, he deploys his secret weapon: his partner Mari. “She’s a very strong runner — stronger than me. She recently did the Barcelona Marathon and she loves all the trails, so she takes care of that side of things.”

Like this super-active couple, Barcelona finds itself in rude health, with the cultural, architectural and sporting regeneration that began with the 1992 Games continuing apace. But how do Mattia’s tours coexist with two pursuits for which the Catalan capital has become renowned in recent years: tapas-based gastronomic overindulgence, and partying into the early hours? He laughs. “It’s not uncommon to have, say, a group of four booked for an early 10km run and only two turn up. It’s often because they’re still in bed, sleeping it off. But that’s absolutely fair enough. When it comes to my city, that’s all part of the game.”

From £80; groups from £45 per person.

Craft beer tour of Berlin with Alex Schmidt

“I’m what you might call a beer nerd,” says Alex Schmidt, as he relaxes in his home city of Berlin after waving off his most recent group. Alex started the business nearly eight years ago with his wife, Margot. He was finishing his Master’s and had a background in cultural anthropology; she was in business marketing. “Basically we decided to fuse together our skill sets to offer tours of a city we love — the Berlin that Berliners know,” says Alex. This meant less-visited neighbourhoods with independent businesses, quirky shops and… microbreweries.

His experiences couldn’t be further from the overpromoted pub crawls that pass for tours in certain European capitals; in Germany, the evolution of brewing and beer is deeply interlaced with the country’s culture, and it’s this that Alex prioritises. Eight tastings are included on the 3.5-hour tour, which heads to the atmospheric, art-adorned streets of Friedrichshain, a former East Berlin district that’s emerged as a beer-lover’s paradise.

He’s always surprised at the diversity of clients: all ages and genders, and an increasing number of alcohol-free converts who are visibly surprised at the quality and range of the alcohol-free craft beers on offer at the breweries and ‘brewpubs’ he incorporates in his tour.

Whatever you come for, it’s a great time to be exploring the German capital, says Alex. “The last 15 to 20 years have seen a real boost. Start-ups, big investment, the development of a thriving food and drink scene. But within that you still have certain ruins in the middle of the city that haven’t been developed — these weird, lost, remarkable places that offer space for subcultures to develop.”

From €99 (£85) per person.

Police tour of London with Francis Mullan

Frustration at the hackneyed limitations of London’s police and crime tours led Francis Mullan to take matters into his own hands. “It was always the same: the Krays and Jack the bloody Ripper!” he says, with exasperation. “So we decided to offer something a bit more sophisticated and authentic.”

Francis certainly had the credentials. Prior to setting up his London Police and Crime Walking Tour with former colleague David Norton, the Londoner was a copper himself for 30 years, working as both a bobby on the beat and a detective.

Starting in Covent Garden, the tour features an eclectic mix of historical, fictional and contemporary sites and stories, including Great Scotland Yard, with its famous revolving sign, a Sherlock Holmes-inspired pub and Bow Street Magistrates Court. The Great Scotland Yard Hotel, which opened in 2019, is a quirky inclusion. It’s set in the building that was the 19th-century headquarters of the Metropolitan Police and boasts a collection of policing artefacts — “truncheons, uniforms, that sort of stuff,” says Francis.

You’re either a policeman, or a former policeman, he explains — “it’s not a job you ever really leave behind.” This ensures he enjoys plenty of rapport with serving officers, who he’ll often bump into en route. “I’ll say what I’m doing and most of the time they’re happy to chat to the group,” says the 65-year-old.

The pace of the walking tour is relaxed and the distances short. “I can generally wrap it up in two hours, 15 minutes,” he says. “It’s strange but there’s this enduring fascination with law and order. Everyone wants to know what it’s like to serve.”

From £30 per person.

Classic car tour of Monaco with Patrick Riem

To stand out in the land of conspicuous wealth is no easy task, but Patrick Riem found a way. The super rich who flock to the tiny principality in their superyachts and supercars often find themselves casting covetous glances at Patrick’s fleet of diminutive electric cars modelled on the classic racers of the 1930s — then signing up for one of his tours. Sometimes, several.

“One guy who was in town on his superyacht booked a 90-minute tour in the morning, another in the afternoon, then came back for a third in the evening,” says Patrick. The head-turning cars are manufactured by a French company called Devinci Automobiles and are zippy, soundless, ecological — and an implausible amount of fun to drive. “It’s not going to give you a heart attack when you step on the gas, like the Bugattis and Lamborghinis you see here,” says Patrick. “But it’s a very cool car.”

There’s a varied menu, from 20-minute pootles to 90-minute grand tours. Patrick leads the way, with clients following in convoy. Monaco’s dazzling beaches, the Hotel de Paris, the Prince’s Palace and the balcony-like coastal road immortalised in multiple Bond movies are just some of the spots that feature. The 60-year-old Monegasque businessman has grown fond of the Devinci cars and loves the way they complement the principality and its racing heritage. “Of all the things Monaco is known for, I believe the Grand Prix is the most prized. All the greatest drivers have driven on these narrow streets and through the chicanes, and you can, too — in a car that fits the architecture and feel of Monaco. It’s La Belle Époque on wheels.”

From €89 (£76) per couple.