Rome stacks three cities on top of each other. Book your way through all of them.
Which Colosseum ticket puts you on the arena floor. What the Vatican costs before nine in the morning. Whether Pompeii really works as a day out from Termini. Reviews of every tour you can book in Rome.
The four bookings a first week in Rome hangs off.
What each one costs, how long it takes, and what the travellers who booked it said afterwards.
01The first morningColosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided TourColosseum, Forum and Palatine on one guided run. Take the earliest slot, before the stone starts holding the heat.
02The Vatican dayVatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour with Optional BasilicaThe galleries that funnel into the Sistine Chapel. What you are really paying for is the hour you go in.
03The day outPompeii, Amalfi Coast, and Sorrento Day TripPompeii and the bay below Vesuvius, there and back in a day. It is a long one, and it is the one people talk about after.
04The evening3 in 1 Cooking Class near Navona: Fettuccine, Ravioli & TiramisuPasta rolled by hand in a kitchen off a courtyard, tiramisu after, and a recipe you can actually repeat.
One monument, four tickets. The difference is where you get to stand.
Every version of the Colosseum is sold separately, and the names do not explain themselves. Here is what the extra money buys.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided Tour
The arena floorOnto the sand itself, level with the gates the fighters came through.
The undergroundThe hypogeum: the cages, the lift shafts and the tunnels below the sand.
Forum and PalatineThe same ticket walks the Forum and climbs the emperors’ hill.
Standard entryGuided or with an audio app, Forum and Palatine usually included.
All 323 ways into the Colosseum →
Rome divides into six days, and they barely overlap.
An arena, a chapel ceiling, tunnels of Christian graves, a villa full of Bernini marble, a river to cross for dinner, and a temple that still has a hole in its roof. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
The Vatican rewards the first hour and punishes the fourth.
Doors open at eight, every route funnels the same way, and by mid morning the Sistine Chapel is shoulder to shoulder under the ceiling. These go in early, or they go in past the line.
- 1Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour with Optional Basilicafrom $79
- 2Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basilica Guided Tourfrom $22
- 3Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & Basilica Tourfrom $130
The days out more travellers book in Rome than anything else.
Every Rome review →One per kind of day, so the list is a shortlist rather than the same Colosseum ticket eight times over.
1
Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Tour with Optional Basilica
Join a 2.5 to 3-hour guided Vatican visit with fast-track entry to the Museums and Sistine Chapel. Your guide leads you through the Belvedere Courtyard, Gallery of Maps, Raphael-era galleries, and Michelangelo’s masterpieces. Add St. Peter’s Basilica for Michelangelo’s Pietà and a special route from the museums.
From · $79
Read our review →
2
Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided Tour
from $52
3
City Sightseeing Hop-on Hop-off Bus with Audioguide
from $15
4
Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Skip-the-Line Entry Ticket
from $43
5
St. Peter’s Basilica, Papal Tombs, and Dome Climb Tour
from $21
6
3 in 1 Cooking Class near Navona: Fettuccine, Ravioli & Tiramisu
from $83
7
Pompeii, Amalfi Coast, and Sorrento Day Trip
from $79
8
Colosseum Tour with Access to the Gladiator Arena
from $55
Rome by golf cart, Vespa or e-bike, because the seven hills are not a metaphor.
The centre is wider than the map suggests and the cobbles punish anyone doing it all on foot. Somebody else drives the cart, you ride pillion on the Vespa, or a motor flattens the climb up the Aventine.
Rome runs from a fourteen-dollar walk to a private day with a driver.
Every tour on the site grouped by price, so you can see where the money stops buying you more of the city.
Entry tickets, audio-guide walks, the catacombs and the open-top bus that loops the whole centre.
The standard full days: guided Colosseum runs, Vatican mornings, pasta classes and the cart tours.
Private guides, the underground permits, and the long runs south to Pompeii and the Amalfi coast.
Pompeii, Tivoli and the Amalfi coast all leave from Rome before breakfast.
A buried city under a volcano, a hill town plumbed with five hundred fountains, cliff villages reached by footbridge, and Florence close enough by fast train to be back for dinner. Every one of these is a day, not a trip.
- 1Pompeii, Amalfi Coast, and Sorrento Day Tripfrom $79
- 2Pompeii, Amalfi Coast and Positano Day Tripfrom $99
- 3Pompeii, Amalfi Coast and Positano Day Trip from Romefrom $101
Pompeii
Tivoli
Florence
Orvieto
Ostia AnticaFour Rome bookings that will not wait for you to land.
Most of this city can be arranged the night before, over a carafe, from a table. These four run on permits, reservation windows and a calendar with no interest in your flight.
- 01Colosseum & Forum with Audio Guide App -Optional ArenaArena floor entry is capped and sold as its own timed ticket. The guided slots are the first thing to disappear.
- 02Borghese Gallery Guided Tour with Skip-the-Line EntryThe Borghese Gallery admits a fixed number of visitors every two hours, by reservation only. Nobody walks in.
- 03Papal Audience with Pope Leo XIV and Expert Local GuideThe audience happens on Wednesday mornings when the Pope is in Rome, and the tickets are claimed days out.
- 04Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourThe tunnels under the arena run on a permit with small groups. When a day is full it stays full.
Between two and five in July, Rome is unusable outdoors.
The travertine holds the heat until midnight and the open sites have no shade at all. The city’s own answer is to go early, then go under the street or behind a wall. The catacombs sit near fifteen degrees all year, and a kitchen is cooler than the Forum.
Three things that only happen in Rome.
Ruins and cathedrals are everywhere in Italy. Standing on the sand of the arena, walking a Christian graveyard cut four levels into tufa, and a Wednesday audience in a sovereign state of nine hundred people are not.
The arena floor
The wooden deck the fights happened on is long gone, so what you walk out onto is a modern platform laid over one end of the hypogeum. It still puts you at the level of the Porta Libitinaria, the gate the dead were carried out through, looking up at fifty thousand seats. Entry is capped and sold separately from the standard ticket.
- 1Colosseum Arena Floor, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 7,448 reviews
- 2Colosseum Tour with Access to the Gladiator Arena★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 6,690 reviews
- 3Gladiator’s Gate: Special Access Colosseum Tour with Arena Floor★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,037 reviews
The catacombs
Roman law kept the dead outside the walls, so the early Christians dug down instead: four and five levels of galleries in soft tufa, shelves cut for bodies, names scratched into plaster. San Callisto alone runs for twenty kilometres. It is cold down there in August, which is the other reason people go.
- 1Crypts and Catacombs Underground Tour with Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 5,341 reviews
- 2The Original Roman Crypts and Catacombs Tour with Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,896 reviews
- 3Catacombs of St. Callixtus Entry Ticket & Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,037 reviews
The papal audience
When the Pope is in Rome he holds a general audience on Wednesday morning, in the square or the Paul VI hall depending on weather. Tickets are free and still need claiming in advance. The tours here are the seat, the security queue and someone explaining what is happening in a language you speak.
- 1Papal Audience with Pope Leo XIV and Expert Local Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 1,632 reviews
- 2Papal Audience with Pope Leo XIV & Expert Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 1,196 reviews
- 3Papal Audience Tour With Reserved Access★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 993 reviews
By landmark
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