Can someone recommend a really good tour guide for Rome? This is our second trip and we feel we missed a lot the first time we visited.
Anyone toured with a company called "Rome Around?"

Suzanne, this topic has been extensively discussed, and fairly recently - use the "Find" button and search for "tour guide rome" to find the topic threads.

Regards,
Bill Turner

We have booked three guided tours with this company for our upcoming trip to Rome. It has excellent reviews from our members.

Italy - Trip Planning - Tour Guides

Another vote for Three Millenia. I recommended them to a friend who just returned last week. She loved them so much that she and her friend signed up for three tours! She said that it was really like being with great friends on each tour.

Am I always negative? No, not always, but in Rome we took a half-day Grey Line group tour of the Forum and Colliseum and a couple of other sites. The brochure said we would see the Forum and Colliseum. Well, we did. So? What is the big deal Scruffy, you say. I say, well, we stood on a public sidewalk at one end of the Forum looking down on it, so we saw it. The people who were not right in front of the guide could not hear a thing because we were on a busy traffic street. For the collesuim we stood outside while the guide talked for a few minutes - we did not go in. So we did see it!

We went back later the same day with our guide book and spent hours wandering around the Colliseum and Forum, it was wonderful. The tour was a waste of time and money.

This is not saying all tours or even this tour would be as bad on other days and/or times but it is my experience. There, there Scruffy, calm down.

I was walking around Rome one day and I came acroos a three millenia tourist guide. It caught my attention at first because the guide was a native.
I found it really interesting and captivating.

I found an article about licensed tour guides in Italy. Apparently there are a lot of unlicensed guides operating in Rome. How do you know if a guide is licensed? Should I just ask when making the reservation? As I tourist do I suffer a penalty if the police give a penalty to my guide?

If you are using an unlicensed guide I cannot see how the tourist can be penalized. A friend of mine ran into a free-lance guide outside the collesium giving free tours. He took the free tour. The guide said the police try to hassle him sometimes but he says the tour is free. The police cannot do anything about him. He just works for tips at the end of the tour, so the tour is strictly free and it is up to the tourist what to tip.

Does anyone know specifically about a company called "Romearound"?

Suzanne--Do you have a website for the company? To my knowledge, it isn't one of the ones that has been discussed here.

I've had wonderful experiences using Scala Reale.

Here is an excellent tour company in Rome: www.anno-domini.us.htm Sev Borzak, PhD provided our tour of the Coliseum and Forum and he was excellent. He is American born but a lifelong resident of Rome.