Virtual secretary Rome refers to AI-powered assistant platforms designed to help residents, tourists, pilgrims, and professionals navigate the services, culture, transportation, and administrative processes of Rome more effectively. According to the European Commission's digital public services agenda, Italian cities are among the early adopters of AI-driven civic tools, and Rome is now leading that shift with multiple deployments across tourism, mobility, healthcare, and city administration. This guide covers every major virtual assistant active in Rome today, including Julia, TEO, ADRYX, and the airport assistant at Rome Fiumicino, explaining what each does, who built it, and how it benefits the city's millions of daily users. Whether you are a tourist seeking hidden gems near the Pantheon, a pilgrim planning your Jubilee visit, or a resident managing administrative tasks, this resource gives you the full picture of Rome's AI transformation.

What Is a Virtual Secretary in Rome and Why It Matters Now

A virtual secretary in Rome is an AI-powered assistant that provides real-time, multilingual, conversational support across tourism, public services, transport, healthcare, and city life through messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and mobile apps. These tools are not simple chatbots with fixed menus; they are built on generative AI services including GPT-4o models, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, and Amazon Bedrock, with multi-agent orchestration and Natural Language Processing enabling them to understand nuanced questions and respond with certified, source-verified answers.

Rome presents a uniquely complex environment for digital assistance. The city hosts roughly 50 million visitors annually, millions of Catholic pilgrims especially during major Jubilee years, a resident population of nearly three million, and a vast network of museums, restaurants, hotels, transportation nodes, and public services. Managing information flows across all these groups in multiple languages while maintaining accuracy, data privacy, and GDPR compliance is a genuine operational challenge. AI virtual assistants address this challenge by connecting users directly to certified data from official sources such as Roma Capitale, Roma Servizi per la Mobilità, and civil protection systems.

The 2026 Jubilee was a defining catalyst. Rome City Council committed to deploying smart digital tools to manage the surge in pilgrims and tourists, funding platforms that could provide real-time guidance on Jubilee info points, Infopoints, transport services, public restrooms, public fountains, and cultural events without requiring large expansions of human staff. The result is a layered ecosystem of AI tools, each targeting a distinct audience and use case, all contributing to a more navigable Eternal City.

Quick answer: A virtual secretary in Rome is an AI assistant built on generative AI technologies such as GPT-4o and Microsoft Azure that helps tourists, residents, and pilgrims access real-time information about tourism, transport, public services, and city administration through WhatsApp, Telegram, and dedicated mobile apps in multiple languages.

Understanding each tool separately is important because they serve distinct needs. Julia targets tourists and locals looking for personalised city exploration. TEO supports the Rome Fiumicino Airport passenger experience. ADRYX handles municipality administrative processes. The civil protection assistant supports emergency and safety information. Together, they represent one of Europe's most comprehensive city-wide AI deployments.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem is built on generative AI, certified public data, and multilingual support, making it one of Europe's most practical city-wide AI deployments for tourists, residents, and pilgrims.

The next section explores the most visible of these tools: Julia, Rome's AI tourism assistant.

Julia: Rome's AI Tourism Virtual Assistant for Tourists and Locals

Julia is Rome's AI-powered virtual travel assistant designed to help both tourists and local residents explore the city through intelligent, personalised conversation. Available through WhatsApp and other messaging applications, Julia acts as a knowledgeable companion that can answer questions about restaurants, museums, cultural events, ticket prices, personalized itineraries, hidden gems, shopping centers, and sustainable tourism options across the city.

The assistant was developed to address a real gap: many visitors to Rome know the Colosseum, the Vatican, and the Pantheon, but they struggle to find quieter, more authentic experiences. Antonio Preiti, himself a citizen of Rome, illustrated this perfectly when he stood in front of the Pantheon and opened a conversation with a simple question: "Is there a quiet, historic place nearby where we can have lunch?" Julia responded with specific, historically rich suggestions including locations near Piazza Mattei and less-visited sites such as the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus and the Park of the Aqueducts. This kind of hyper-local guidance, delivered instantly through a WhatsApp chatbot, represents a fundamentally different travel experience compared to standard search engines or printed guidebooks.

What Julia Can Help You With

Julia is built to handle a wide range of tourist and resident questions. The assistant can help with restaurant recommendations that match dietary preferences and budgets, hotel suggestions, museum opening hours, ticket prices, upcoming cultural events, event discovery across the city's neighbourhoods, and sustainable mobility options for getting from one site to another. Julia also supports location sharing, which allows it to give geolocation-aware recommendations based on where the user is standing in real time.

The platform actively encourages exploration beyond the standard tourist circuit. Looking for hidden gems? Ask Julia, Rome's AI assistant, and you will frequently receive suggestions for lesser-known sites such as Piazza Mattei, the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus, or the Park of the Aqueducts. This commitment to sustainable tourism and authentic city exploration reflects the Rome Attraction Foundation's philosophy that responsible visitor distribution across the city reduces pressure on over-visited monuments and enriches the overall experience.

Personalised Itineraries and City Life Support

One of Julia's most practical features is its ability to build personalised itineraries based on user preferences, time available, physical mobility, and interests. A user can describe their travel profile, such as a first-time visitor with three days, an interest in Roman history, and a preference for avoiding large crowds, and Julia will construct a day-by-day plan using certified information from official tourism sources. The assistant also supports event discovery, alerting users to exhibitions, festivals, open-air concerts, and city life events happening during their stay.

For locals, Julia functions differently. Residents tend to ask for new experiences within their own city, discovering restaurants in unfamiliar neighbourhoods, learning about temporary exhibitions at smaller museums, or finding out about local service providers in specific districts. Julia's multilingual support also makes it valuable for Rome's large expat population and for international residents who may not be fluent in Italian but need practical city guidance.

DID YOU KNOW: The Rome Attraction Foundation, which supports Julia's tourism philosophy, estimates that sustainable visitor distribution across the city could reduce peak-hour congestion at major monuments by encouraging visitors to explore Rome's 300-plus lesser-known archaeological and cultural sites.

Data Privacy, GDPR, and Conversation History

Julia is designed with GDPR compliance built into its architecture. When users ask "How do you protect my data?" the platform explains that conversation history is stored only to improve response quality within the active session and that user data is not sold to third parties. Geolocation data, when shared, is used only to improve the relevance of recommendations and is not retained beyond the session. These principles align with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which requires explicit consent and transparent data handling for AI systems processing personal information.

The question "Can I trust the information you provide?" is answered clearly through Julia's use of certified sources. All restaurant, museum, transport, and event information is drawn from verified databases connected to official Rome tourism and municipal systems, reducing the risk of outdated or inaccurate guidance.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Julia is a geolocation-aware, GDPR-compliant, WhatsApp-based AI tourism assistant that delivers personalised itineraries, hidden gem recommendations, and real-time event guidance for both tourists and Rome residents.

Beyond tourism, Rome's virtual assistant ecosystem extends deep into the city's transport and mobility infrastructure, covered in the next section.

TEO: The AI Airport Assistant at Rome Fiumicino Airport

TEO is the AI virtual assistant deployed at Rome Fiumicino Airport by Aeroporti di Roma, designed to transform the passenger experience through intelligent, multilingual, conversational support available via WhatsApp and other digital channels. Rome Fiumicino Airport, officially known as Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, is one of Europe's busiest aviation hubs, serving tens of millions of passengers annually and holding a strong Skytrax rating for passenger services.

The assistant was developed through a collaboration between Aeroporti di Roma and Storm Reply, a technology partner within the Reply group specialising in AI and cloud services. TEO runs on Amazon Web Services using Amazon Bedrock, making it one of the few European airport AI systems built on AWS's generative AI infrastructure rather than the more common Microsoft Azure stack. This architectural choice reflects the specific operational demands of airport environments, where scalability, real-time data processing, and low-latency responses are critical.

What TEO Does for Passengers at Rome Fiumicino

TEO handles a comprehensive range of airport service queries. Passengers can ask about flight connections, baggage tracking, transportation services between terminals, check-in procedures, duty-free shopping, and facilities within the airport. The assistant also provides guidance on transportation from Rome Fiumicino to the city centre, including express train options, taxi services, and bus connections, which directly addresses one of the most common tourist questions: "Need to find transportation from your hotel to the Vatican? Looking for a reliable taxi?" TEO connects that pre-arrival planning with verified, real-time airport service information.

The platform's multi-agent architecture allows TEO to coordinate responses across multiple data systems simultaneously. When a passenger asks about a delayed flight, baggage tracking status, and lounge access in a single message, TEO's multi-agent orchestration system retrieves answers from separate data sources and compiles a coherent, complete response. This approach is significantly more efficient than older, rule-based airport chatbots that could only handle one topic per message.

Passenger Experience and the World Aviation Festival 2026

Aeroporti di Roma presented TEO's capabilities at the World Aviation Festival 2026, where AI airport assistants were among the most discussed innovations in the passenger experience category. According to Yahoo Finance reporting on the event, airports that deploy generative AI assistants report measurable improvements in passenger satisfaction scores, reduced information desk queues, and faster resolution of common service queries. TEO's multilingual support is particularly valued at a major international hub like Rome Fiumicino, where passengers arrive from dozens of countries with varying levels of Italian and English proficiency.

The assistant supports multiple languages natively, allowing passengers to ask questions in their own language and receive answers without needing translation apps or human intermediaries. This is especially important during peak travel seasons when information desk staff are overwhelmed and passengers face long waits for basic guidance.

Quick answer: TEO is the AI-powered WhatsApp assistant at Rome Fiumicino Airport, built by Aeroporti di Roma and Storm Reply on Amazon Web Services, that helps passengers with flight information, baggage tracking, transportation services, and airport navigation in multiple languages.

Sustainable Mobility and Airport Connections

TEO also supports sustainable mobility by actively promoting lower-emission transport options from Rome Fiumicino to the city. When passengers ask about getting to central Rome, the assistant provides detailed information about the Leonardo Express train, bus connections, and shared ride services before mentioning taxi options, aligning with Rome's broader sustainable transport goals. The assistant can also provide ticket prices in real time, allowing passengers to make informed choices based on budget and travel time.

KEY TAKEAWAY: TEO is one of Europe's most advanced AI airport assistants, combining Amazon Bedrock infrastructure, multi-agent architecture, and multilingual support to deliver a faster, more personalised passenger experience at Rome Fiumicino Airport.

The airport assistant serves millions of international arrivals, but Rome's residents also benefit from dedicated AI tools for city administration, explored in the next section.

ADRYX and the Rome City Council Virtual Assistant for Municipal Services

ADRYX is the AI-powered virtual assistant developed for Roma Capitale, the municipal government of Rome, designed to help residents manage administrative processes, access public services, and navigate city information without visiting physical offices. Built in collaboration with technology partners including Accenture Group and Intellera, ADRYX uses generative intelligence and Natural Language Processing to handle queries about administrative tasks ranging from permit applications to waste collection schedules.

The Rome City Council digital platform represents a significant shift in how the Municipio de Roma Capital delivers servicios municipales to its nearly three million residents. Administrative processes that previously required office visits, long phone queues, or navigating complex government websites can now be initiated or guided through a conversational AI interface. ADRYX is accessible through multiple digital channels including web portals and messaging applications, making it practical for residents who may not be comfortable with formal government websites.

Jubilee Support and Info Points

The 2026 Jubilee created an extraordinary administrative and logistical challenge for Roma Capitale. The event brought millions of pilgrims to Rome over several months, all requiring guidance on Jubilee info points, Infopoints, transport logistics, accommodation options, public restrooms, public fountains, and civil protection protocols. ADRYX was expanded specifically to handle Jubilee-related queries, providing real-time answers drawn from certified sources maintained by Roma Servizi per la Mobilità and the Civil Protection Agency.

Pilgrims from around the world asked questions in multiple languages about procesos administrativos, Jubileo event schedules, museos and exposiciones relevant to the pilgrimage, and guía digital resources for navigating the city. ADRYX's multilingual support ensured that pilgrims could receive certified, accurate answers regardless of whether they asked in Italian, English, Spanish, or other supported languages. This capability was highlighted by city officials as one of the practical successes of Rome's digital transformation programme during the Jubilee period.

Civil Protection and Emergency Information

The Civil Protection Agency component of Rome's virtual assistant ecosystem provides residents and visitors with real-time guidance during emergencies, weather events, and public safety incidents. The system uses Automated classification and generative intelligence to prioritise and route queries based on urgency, ensuring that critical safety questions receive immediate, accurate responses drawn from the Civil Protection Agency's certified data systems.

Real-time ER wait times at hospital emergency rooms, pharmacies, and urgent care services are also accessible through the city's AI platform, representing a direct improvement in public health communication. Residents can ask about nearby farmacias, hospital services, and urgent medical guidance without navigating multiple government websites. This integration of healthcare information into the city's virtual assistant ecosystem reflects a broader European trend toward unified digital civic platforms.

GDPR Compliance and Certified Data Sources

All data provided by ADRYX and Rome's municipal AI system comes from certified sources maintained by Roma Capitale and its partner agencies. The platform's GDPR compliance framework ensures that user queries, location data, and personal information are handled in accordance with EU data protection regulations. When residents ask "How do you protect my data?", the system explains its data minimisation approach, session-based data retention policy, and the absence of commercial data sharing.

The use of certified data is a fundamental design principle. Unlike general-purpose AI assistants that might draw on unverified internet sources, ADRYX pulls answers from validated municipal databases, official Roma Capitale records, and partner agency systems. This means residents can trust the information they receive about public services, administrative deadlines, transport schedules, and emergency contacts.

TIP: When using Rome's municipal AI assistant for administrative processes, always confirm deadlines and document requirements through the official Roma Capitale portal, as regulations can change and real-time system data may occasionally lag behind the most current updates.

KEY TAKEAWAY: ADRYX and Rome's municipal AI platform give residents, pilgrims, and visitors AI-powered access to certified administrative, civil protection, and public services information, reducing the burden on physical government offices and improving response times across the city.

The technology infrastructure behind all of these systems is equally important to understand, and the next section breaks down the AI architecture powering Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem.

The AI Technology Infrastructure Behind Rome's Virtual Secretaries

Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem runs on a sophisticated combination of generative AI services, cloud infrastructure, and multi-agent architectures. The primary platforms include Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, Azure AI Content Safety, Microsoft Fabric, and Amazon Bedrock, with different deployments choosing between them based on operational requirements, security standards, and partner expertise.

The GPT-4o model is the most widely referenced generative AI engine across Rome's municipal and tourism AI systems. GPT-4o's multimodal capabilities, which allow it to process text, images, and audio, make it particularly suited to tourism and city navigation use cases where users may share photos of locations or ask voice questions through mobile applications. Microsoft's deployment of GPT-4o through the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service provides the enterprise-grade security, compliance, and scalability that public sector systems require.

Multi-Agent Orchestration and Semantic Kernel

One of the key technical innovations in Rome's AI platform architecture is multi-agent orchestration, implemented through frameworks such as Microsoft's Semantic Kernel. Multi-agent orchestration allows a single user query to be simultaneously processed by multiple specialised AI agents, each responsible for a different domain such as transport, tourism, healthcare, or administration. The results are then coordinated by an orchestration layer that produces a single coherent response.

This architecture matters because users rarely ask questions that fit neatly into one category. A pilgrim might ask about getting to the Vatican, finding a Jubilee info point nearby, checking public transport schedules, and understanding what documents they need, all in a single message. Multi-agent orchestration handles this complexity without requiring the user to repeat their query or switch between different systems.

NTT DATA and Microsoft Partnership in Rome

NTT DATA is one of the primary technology integrators supporting Rome's AI virtual assistant deployments, working alongside Microsoft to implement generative AI services across multiple city systems. The NTT DATA and Microsoft collaboration brings enterprise-grade AI implementation experience to the complex challenge of deploying AI in a city with one of the world's most demanding combinations of visitor volume, heritage sensitivity, and administrative complexity.

The partnership uses Microsoft Fabric as a unified analytics and data platform, allowing different city agencies to share certified data securely while maintaining individual system sovereignty. Azure AI Search enables fast, contextually accurate retrieval from Rome's large collections of certified municipal, tourism, and transport data, while Azure AI Content Safety filters outputs to ensure responses meet public-sector appropriateness standards.

Natural Language Processing and Automated Classification

Natural Language Processing is the foundational capability that makes all of Rome's virtual assistants feel conversational rather than mechanical. NLP allows the systems to understand questions asked in natural, informal language rather than requiring users to input specific keywords or navigate menu trees. Automated classification then routes each query to the appropriate data source or agent within the multi-agent architecture, ensuring that questions about transport go to transport data systems, questions about museums go to cultural data sources, and questions about administrative processes go to municipal records.

This combination of NLP and Automated classification is what allows a user to type a casual, conversational question such as "Is there a quiet, historic place nearby where we can have lunch?" and receive a contextually rich, location-aware answer rather than a generic list of restaurants.

Quick answer: Rome's virtual secretary platforms are built on GPT-4o models via Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Amazon Bedrock, using multi-agent orchestration, Semantic Kernel, Natural Language Processing, and Automated classification to deliver accurate, multilingual, and GDPR-compliant AI responses across tourism, transport, municipal services, and healthcare.

KEY TAKEAWAY: The technical depth of Rome's AI infrastructure, combining GPT-4o, multi-agent orchestration, Semantic Kernel, Azure AI Search, and Amazon Bedrock, is what distinguishes these deployments from basic chatbots and enables genuinely intelligent, context-aware city assistance.

With the infrastructure understood, the next section examines the communication channels through which Romans and visitors access these AI assistants.

Communication Channels: WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messaging Applications

Rome's virtual secretary platforms are deliberately deployed through the messaging applications that people already use every day, primarily WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger, rather than requiring users to download separate apps or navigate government websites. This design philosophy, rooted in Nudge Theory principles applied to public service design, recognises that digital tools are only effective when they reduce rather than increase the user's effort to access information.

WhatsApp is the primary channel for most of Rome's public-facing AI assistants. The platform's ubiquity across Europe, its support for rich media, location sharing, and conversational threads, and its strong user familiarity make it the logical choice for a tourist assistance service. A visitor to Rome who wants to ask about getting from their hotel to the Vatican does not need to install a new app or create an account; they simply add the WhatsApp chatbot contact and start a conversation in their own language.

WhatsApp Chatbot Features for Rome Visitors

Rome's WhatsApp chatbot implementations, including Julia and TEO, support a wide range of interaction types. Users can share their location to receive geolocation-aware recommendations, send photos of buildings or artworks to receive identification and contextual information, ask free-text questions in natural language, and receive formatted responses with links to booking pages, maps, and official tourism resources. The conversational history feature allows the assistant to maintain context across multiple messages within a session, enabling multi-step planning conversations without the user needing to repeat their preferences or location.

Telegram is used as a supplementary channel, particularly for users who prefer it for privacy reasons or who have already integrated it into their travel planning workflow. The Civil Protection Agency's emergency information system is also accessible via Telegram, providing residents and visitors with a familiar, reliable channel for urgent information during incidents.

Multilingual Support and International Accessibility

Multilingual support is a non-negotiable requirement for any effective virtual secretary in Rome. The city's visitors speak dozens of languages, and its resident population includes large communities of Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, and English speakers. Julia, TEO, and ADRYX all support multiple languages natively, with responses generated in the language of the user's query rather than requiring a separate translation step.

This multilingual architecture is enabled by the GPT-4o model's native multilingual capability, which allows it to process and respond in more than 50 languages without degrading response quality. For NTT DATA and Microsoft's implementation teams, this meant building data pipelines and certified source connections that could deliver accurate information regardless of the query language, a significant technical and content challenge.

Storm Reply, NTT DATA, and the Implementation Ecosystem

Storm Reply played a central role in developing the AWS-based architecture for TEO at Rome Fiumicino Airport, bringing specialist expertise in Amazon Web Services deployments for complex, high-traffic environments. NTT DATA contributed to the broader Rome municipal AI ecosystem alongside Microsoft, handling systems integration, data pipeline construction, and the training of AI models on Rome-specific certified data sources. Accenture Group's subsidiary Intellera provided public sector transformation expertise, ensuring that the AI deployments met the governance, compliance, and user experience standards required by Roma Capitale.

The training of Rome's AI assistants on local data is an important detail. Generic AI models do not know the specific layout of Rome Fiumicino Airport's Terminal 3, the current status of Jubilee info points, or the real-time opening hours of the Pantheon. The training and fine-tuning process conducted by these implementation partners ensures that each virtual secretary provides Rome-specific, accurate answers rather than generic AI responses.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Deploying Rome's virtual secretaries through WhatsApp, Telegram, and familiar messaging applications removes adoption barriers and ensures that tourists, pilgrims, and residents can access AI assistance without learning new tools or creating new accounts.

Healthcare and emergency services represent one of the most sensitive and consequential applications of AI in Rome's ecosystem, examined in the next section.

Healthcare AI Applications in Rome: Emergency Services and Clinical Decision Support

Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem extends into healthcare in two distinct ways: real-time public health information for residents and visitors, and clinical decision support tools for medical professionals managing complex cases. These applications share common AI infrastructure but serve fundamentally different user needs with very different stakes.

For residents and visitors, the most practical healthcare AI feature is real-time ER wait times at hospital emergency rooms across Rome. Users can ask the city's AI assistant about wait times at specific hospitals, find the nearest farmacias, or get guidance on which level of medical service is appropriate for their situation. This information is drawn from the electronic systems of Rome's public hospital network, providing reasonably current data that helps users make informed decisions about where to seek care.

Clinical Decision Support for Oncology: The Multidisciplinary Tumor Board

At the clinical level, Rome's healthcare institutions have deployed AI tools to support the Multidisciplinary Tumor Board process for complex cases including Locally Advanced Cervical Cancer. These tools use predictive models built on Electronic Health Records, Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography imaging data, Magnetic Resonance imaging, and clinical features including FIGO stage to support collaborative decision stages among oncologists, radiologists, and surgeons.

The AI system does not replace clinical judgment but functions as a user-oriented operational tool that aggregates data from multiple sources and presents decision-relevant summaries to the multidisciplinary team. By processing large volumes of patient data and identifying patterns in clinical stage progression, the system helps clinicians identify treatment pathways more quickly, reducing the time between diagnosis and treatment initiation in time-sensitive cases such as Locally Advanced Cervical Cancer.

Food and Nutrition Surveillance

Rome's public health AI infrastructure also supports Food and Nutrition Surveillance, enabling health authorities to monitor population-level nutritional patterns and identify emerging public health risks. This application of generative AI to public health data represents a less visible but equally important use of the technology, connecting AI-driven analysis to evidence-based policy recommendations for Rome's municipal health services.

IMPORTANT: Clinical decision support AI tools such as those used in Rome's oncology services are designed to assist qualified medical professionals, not to replace them. Patients and families should always consult qualified clinicians for treatment decisions, and these tools are not accessible to the general public through consumer channels such as WhatsApp or Telegram.

Emergency Information and Civil Protection Integration

The Civil Protection Agency component of Rome's AI ecosystem provides residents and visitors with certified emergency information during weather events, civil incidents, and public safety situations. Automated classification ensures that messages flagged as urgent receive prioritised processing, and the system draws exclusively from Civil Protection Agency certified data to avoid the risk of rumour or misinformation spreading during emergencies.

Real-time integration between the civil protection AI and Roma Servizi per la Mobilità means that transport disruptions caused by emergencies are automatically reflected in the AI assistant's transport guidance, ensuring that users are not directed toward routes that are temporarily closed or unsafe.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Rome's healthcare AI applications range from accessible real-time ER wait time information for residents and visitors to sophisticated clinical decision support for oncology multidisciplinary teams, all grounded in certified data and designed to augment rather than replace human expertise.

The following section examines the transportation and mobility intelligence that ties Rome's entire virtual secretary ecosystem together.

Transportation and Mobility Intelligence in Rome's Virtual Secretary Ecosystem

Transportation is one of the most frequently requested categories of information from Rome's AI assistants. A city of Rome's size, historical complexity, and tourist density presents significant mobility challenges, and the virtual secretary ecosystem addresses these through real-time integration with Roma Servizi per la Mobilità, Aeroporti di Roma systems, and public transport databases.

Users regularly ask about getting between major sites such as the Vatican, Colosseum, Pantheon, and Rome Fiumicino Airport. They ask about ticket prices for buses, metro, and express trains, about taxi booking, about sustainable mobility options including cycling and electric scooter services, and about the impact of Jubilee-related road closures on their travel plans. Rome's AI assistants are designed to handle all of these queries with real-time data rather than static information.

Roma Servizi per la Mobilità Integration

Roma Servizi per la Mobilità provides the certified transport data that powers the mobility layer of Rome's virtual secretary platforms. This agency manages Rome's public transport information systems, coordinates with ATAC for bus and metro services, and maintains real-time data on service disruptions, route changes, and special event schedules. Integration with this agency's data systems is what allows Julia, ADRYX, and other assistants to provide accurate, up-to-date transport guidance rather than relying on generic maps or outdated schedules.

For international visitors, the most common transport question is how to reach central Rome from Rome Fiumicino Airport. TEO handles this at the airport end, providing specific guidance on the Leonardo Express train, COTRAL buses, and taxi services with current ticket prices. Once in the city, Julia and ADRYX take over, providing metro, bus, and tram guidance for exploring Rome's neighbourhoods.

Sustainable Mobility and the Jubilee Transport Plan

The Jubilee transport plan required exceptional coordination between Rome's AI platforms and mobility services. Millions of pilgrims arriving over several months, many unfamiliar with Rome's geography, created an unprecedented demand for real-time mobility guidance. Virtual assistants played a central role in distributing pilgrims across the city's transport network efficiently, promoting sustainable mobility options and reducing congestion at peak locations such as the Vatican and major basilicas.

The AI platforms actively applied Nudge Theory principles to mobility guidance, presenting sustainable transport options first and framing them in terms of both convenience and environmental benefit. This approach, developed in collaboration with Intellera and Accenture Group's public sector behavioural design practice, reflects growing recognition that AI systems can influence urban mobility patterns at scale when they are designed with behavioural science principles in mind.

Quick answer: Rome's virtual secretaries provide real-time transport guidance by integrating with Roma Servizi per la Mobilità, Aeroporti di Roma, and public transport databases, enabling tourists, pilgrims, and residents to plan journeys across the city using current schedule and disruption data through WhatsApp and other messaging channels.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Transport intelligence is one of the highest-value capabilities in Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem, directly reducing friction for visitors and residents navigating a complex, high-traffic city with certified, real-time mobility data.

Understanding how to practically use these tools requires a clear workflow, which the next section provides.

How to Use Rome's Virtual Secretaries: A Practical Step-by-Step Workflow

Using Rome's AI virtual assistants effectively requires knowing which tool to use for which purpose, how to start a conversation, and how to get the most relevant responses. The workflow below applies to tourists, pilgrims, and residents who want to access Julia, TEO, ADRYX, or the civil protection AI through their preferred messaging channel.

Getting the Best Results From Julia

Julia performs best when users provide context about their preferences, available time, mobility constraints, and interests. A question such as "Explore Rome together?" or "Do you want a personalised experience?" prompts Julia to gather profile information before generating itinerary suggestions. Users who invest two to three minutes in this preference-setting conversation typically receive significantly more relevant recommendations than those who ask single, context-free questions.

For restaurant recommendations, specifying budget range, cuisine preference, dietary requirements, and whether you want a tourist-facing or locally-oriented venue produces much sharper results. Julia's certified restaurant data includes information that generic review platforms may miss, such as historical significance, neighbourhood character, and accessibility features.

Getting the Best Results From TEO at Rome Fiumicino

TEO is most useful when accessed before arriving at Rome Fiumicino Airport. Passengers who initiate a conversation during their flight or while waiting for connections can receive guidance on which terminal to proceed to, where baggage reclaim is located, which transport options are available for their destination, and whether any services they plan to use are currently experiencing disruptions. This pre-arrival use case significantly reduces the stress of arrival at a busy international airport.

Quick answer: To get the best results from Rome's virtual secretaries, share your location, provide context about your preferences and needs, ask in natural conversational language, and use follow-up questions to refine recommendations. Verify critical booking and administrative information through official sources before acting.

KEY TAKEAWAY: A structured approach to using Rome's virtual secretaries, including location sharing, natural language questions, and follow-up conversations, produces significantly better results than single, context-free queries.

Even powerful tools are often misunderstood, and the next section addresses the most common myths about Rome's virtual secretary platforms.

Common Myths About Virtual Secretaries in Rome Debunked

MYTH: Rome's AI assistants are just basic chatbots that only answer pre-programmed questions.

FACT: Julia, TEO, ADRYX, and Rome's other virtual secretaries are built on GPT-4o and multi-agent architectures that use Natural Language Processing to understand genuinely complex, conversational queries. They retrieve answers from certified data sources in real time and can handle multi-part, context-dependent questions that simple rule-based chatbots cannot process. These are generative AI systems, not scripted menu trees.

MYTH: You need to speak Italian fluently to use Rome's virtual assistants effectively.

FACT: All of Rome's major virtual secretary platforms support multiple languages natively, including English, Spanish, French, German, and many others. The AI responds in whatever language you use to ask your question, with no setup or language selection required. This multilingual capability is a core design requirement, not an optional feature, reflecting Rome's status as one of the world's most visited international cities.

MYTH: Sharing your location with a virtual assistant in Rome is a privacy risk.

FACT: Rome's virtual assistant platforms are required to comply with GDPR, which mandates explicit consent, data minimisation, and transparent data handling. Location data shared with Julia or TEO is used only within the active session to provide geolocation-relevant responses and is not retained, sold, or shared with third parties. Users can also opt out of location sharing at any time without losing access to the assistant's other features.

MYTH: These AI tools are only useful for tourists and not relevant for Rome residents.

FACT: ADRYX and the Rome City Council's digital platform are specifically designed for residents managing administrative processes, accessing public services, and getting civil protection information. Julia also serves locals, as illustrated by Antonio Preiti, a Rome resident who used it near the Pantheon to discover quiet historic restaurants in his own city. The platforms serve residents, tourists, pilgrims, and expats with distinct but equally practical functionality.

MYTH: Virtual secretaries in Rome can replace human staff at airports, municipal offices, and tourist information desks.

FACT: Rome's virtual secretary platforms are designed to complement human staff, not replace them. They handle the high volume of routine, repetitive queries that previously created long queues at information desks and phone lines, freeing human staff to handle complex, sensitive, or situation-specific needs that require judgment, empathy, and authority. The human-AI collaboration model, as applied at Rome Fiumicino Airport and Roma Capitale, is one of the practical lessons emerging from these deployments.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Rome's virtual secretaries are generative AI systems, not simple chatbots, and they serve residents, tourists, and pilgrims equally across multiple languages with full GDPR compliance, functioning as practical complements to rather than replacements for human service staff.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a virtual secretary in Rome and how does it differ from a regular chatbot?

A virtual secretary in Rome is an AI-powered assistant built on generative AI technologies such as GPT-4o, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, or Amazon Bedrock that provides real-time, multilingual support for tourism, transport, municipal services, and emergency information through messaging applications. Unlike basic chatbots that follow pre-programmed menu trees, Rome's virtual secretaries use Natural Language Processing and multi-agent orchestration to understand complex, conversational queries and retrieve answers from certified data sources. This means they can handle nuanced, multi-part questions and maintain conversational context across a session, delivering genuinely helpful, personalised responses rather than generic scripted answers.

Who are the main virtual assistant platforms operating in Rome?

Rome's main virtual secretary platforms include Julia, a tourism and city exploration assistant developed with support from the Rome Attraction Foundation; TEO, the passenger experience AI assistant at Rome Fiumicino Airport built by Aeroporti di Roma and Storm Reply on Amazon Web Services; ADRYX, the municipal government assistant developed for Roma Capitale with support from Accenture Group and Intellera; and the Civil Protection Agency AI system for emergency information. Each platform serves a distinct primary audience and connects to different certified data sources, but all use generative AI and multilingual support as core capabilities.

How can I access Julia, Rome's AI tourism assistant?

Julia is accessible through WhatsApp and other messaging applications, making it easy to use without downloading a separate app. You can start a conversation in your own language, share your location to receive geolocation-aware recommendations, and ask questions in natural, conversational language about restaurants, museums, cultural events, personalised itineraries, and hidden gems. The assistant encourages users to explore Rome beyond the major tourist sites, offering suggestions for quieter historic locations, sustainable tourism options, and neighbourhood experiences that standard travel guides often overlook. Simply search for the Julia Rome AI assistant contact through the official Rome Attraction Foundation channels.

How does TEO work at Rome Fiumicino Airport?

TEO is the AI virtual assistant operated by Aeroporti di Roma at Rome Fiumicino Airport, accessible via WhatsApp and the airport's digital platforms. Built on Amazon Web Services using Amazon Bedrock and developed with Storm Reply, TEO handles passenger queries about flight connections, baggage tracking, transportation services between the airport and Rome's city centre, terminal navigation, and airport facilities. Passengers can access TEO before arrival to plan their journey, during layovers to explore airport services, or upon landing to quickly find the most suitable transport option to their final destination. TEO's multilingual support ensures passengers can receive accurate guidance regardless of their language.

Can I use Rome's virtual assistants for administrative tasks as a resident?

Yes. ADRYX and Roma Capitale's digital AI platform are specifically designed to help Rome residents manage administrative processes without visiting physical government offices. Users can ask questions about permit applications, public service schedules, waste collection, local regulations, and Jubilee-related administrative matters. The platform draws from certified municipal data sources and complies fully with GDPR requirements. While the AI can guide you through processes and provide certified information, complex or sensitive administrative matters may still require follow-up with human staff at the relevant municipal office or through the official Roma Capitale web portal.

How does Rome's virtual secretary protect my personal data?

Rome's virtual secretary platforms are required to comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Conversation data is used only to generate responses within the active session and is not retained for commercial purposes or shared with third parties without explicit consent. Location data shared for geolocation-aware recommendations is used only within the session and is not stored beyond it. Users can request information about data handling from any of the platforms and can withdraw consent at any time. For full details on data practices, users should consult the privacy policies published by each operator, including Aeroporti di Roma for TEO and Roma Capitale for ADRYX.

What languages do Rome's AI assistants support?

All of Rome's major virtual secretary platforms support multiple languages natively. Julia, TEO, and ADRYX detect the language of incoming messages automatically and respond in the same language without requiring a separate setup step. This multilingual support is powered by the GPT-4o model's native capability, which covers more than 50 languages with high accuracy. Key supported languages include Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese, reflecting the primary language groups among Rome's international visitors, pilgrims, and resident expat communities. Language quality may vary slightly for less common languages, and users encountering translation issues are encouraged to try English as a fallback.

How does geolocation work in Julia and other Rome virtual assistants?

When you share your location with Julia or another Rome virtual assistant through WhatsApp's location sharing feature, the AI uses your current coordinates to provide contextually relevant recommendations. For example, if you share your location near the Pantheon, Julia will suggest nearby restaurants, lesser-known historical sites, and transport options within walking distance rather than providing generic city-wide suggestions. Location data is processed in real time within the active session and is not stored beyond the conversation. Sharing your location is optional, but it significantly improves the relevance of recommendations, particularly for restaurant, museum, and event discovery queries.

What should I do if the virtual assistant gives me an incorrect or outdated answer?

If you receive an answer that appears outdated or incorrect, you can use the feedback feature available within most of Rome's virtual assistant platforms to flag the issue. This helps the implementation teams, including NTT DATA, Storm Reply, and Roma Capitale's technology partners, to identify and correct data quality issues in the underlying certified sources. For critical matters such as transport bookings, visa requirements, medical advice, or administrative deadlines, you should always verify the information through the relevant official website before taking action. Real-time data systems occasionally experience delays, and verified official sources remain the most reliable reference for time-sensitive decisions.

Are Rome's virtual assistants useful during the Jubilee?

Rome's virtual secretary platforms were specifically expanded and enhanced to support the Jubilee, making them particularly valuable for pilgrims visiting Rome. ADRYX and Julia can provide real-time information about Jubilee info points, Infopoints, pilgrim routes, event schedules, Vatican-related services, public restrooms, public fountains, and transport options for reaching major basilicas and pilgrimage sites. The multilingual support is especially important during the Jubilee, when pilgrims from dozens of countries arrive with limited familiarity with Rome's geography or Italian language. Civil protection information, including crowd management guidance and emergency contacts, is also accessible through the AI platform.

Can virtual assistants in Rome help with finding restaurants and hotels?

Yes. Julia, Rome's tourism virtual assistant, is particularly well-suited to restaurant and hotel discovery. The assistant uses certified tourism data to recommend restaurants based on cuisine type, budget, neighbourhood, dietary requirements, and historical significance. For hotels, Julia can suggest options based on proximity to key sites, budget range, and user preferences. One of Julia's distinctive capabilities is recommending less-visited, authentic restaurants that provide a more local experience, as demonstrated when a Rome resident asked for a "quiet, historic place nearby" near the Pantheon and received specific, rich recommendations including locations near Piazza Mattei and other lesser-known historic venues.

How does the AI virtual assistant handle emergency situations in Rome?

The Civil Protection Agency AI system integrated into Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem handles emergency queries by drawing from certified Civil Protection Agency data sources and providing real-time guidance on safety procedures, emergency contacts, hospital ER wait times, and transport disruptions. Automated classification within the system prioritises messages flagged as urgent, ensuring faster processing during incidents. The system is available through Telegram and other channels, and it is integrated with Roma Servizi per la Mobilità's data so that transport disruptions caused by emergencies are automatically reflected in mobility guidance. For life-threatening emergencies, users should always call the European emergency number 112 first.

Is TEO at Rome Fiumicino Airport available before I land?

TEO can be accessed through WhatsApp and Aeroporti di Roma's digital channels before you arrive at Rome Fiumicino Airport. Initiating a conversation during your outbound flight or while in transit allows you to plan your airport arrival, check current transport options to the city centre, understand the terminal layout, and inquire about any service disruptions that might affect your journey. This pre-arrival use case is one of TEO's most practical features for international passengers who want to minimise confusion and delays upon landing at one of Europe's busiest aviation hubs. TEO's multilingual support means you can ask questions in your preferred language from anywhere in the world.

How does Faruse support international professionals seeking to work in cities like Rome?

Faruse helps international professionals search for English-speaking jobs and internships across Europe, including in Italy. For candidates interested in working in Rome's growing technology, tourism, public services, or AI-related sectors, Faruse provides job discovery by country and city, company research, recruiter access, salary benchmarking, and visa intelligence to help candidates understand what is required to work legally in Italy. The platform supports candidates at every stage of the application process, from building a stronger CV to understanding Italian work permit requirements. Professionals interested in the technology roles driving Rome's AI transformation can explore English-speaking jobs in Italy through Faruse's European job search platform.

Conclusion

Rome's virtual secretary ecosystem, spanning Julia for tourism, TEO for airport services, ADRYX for municipal administration, and civil protection AI for emergency information, represents one of Europe's most comprehensive deployments of generative AI in urban public services. Built on GPT-4o, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Amazon Bedrock, and multi-agent architectures, these platforms deliver multilingual, GDPR-compliant, personalised assistance to millions of tourists, pilgrims, and residents navigating the Eternal City. The integration of certified data sources, sustainable mobility principles, and behavioural design through Nudge Theory makes Rome's approach a model for other European cities. For international professionals seeking to build a career in the technology, tourism, or public sector ecosystems driving this transformation, explore English-speaking jobs in Italy on Faruse and start building a focused application plan for your target role and city.