Colosseum underground tours recommendations
 

Looking for tour for end of September . Tried Walks of Italy, Viatar, and Dark Rome- all booked. What else would you recommend?

The Coopculture (official) site tours have not been released for September yet. Keep trying this website.


http://www.coopculture.it/en/events.cfm?id=6

As you can see, purchases are only available up to 30 June 2016. Keep trying for the next batch of releases - bookmark the site.

We booked ours through Coopcultur and were really pleased with our tour.

Thank you. I have looked at this site and was rather confused. Do I buy an entrance ticket first and then book the tour? And then there is a reservation fee. It is so inexpensive compared to the tour companies. What is the difference?

Yes, you have to buy the tour separately from the entrance ticket.

There's a certain advantage to buying the entrance ticket separately, because you can print the entrance ticket at home, while the tour ticket has to be picked up at the Colosseum on the day of the tour. This allows you to visit the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill first, even the day before, because the ticket is good for both sites, for two consecutive days.

I've never taken the Underground Tour, nor any other tour at the Colosseum, although I've visited it several times. I find that a good guide book and the very informative signs at the site are plenty for me. However, the official tour gets very good reviews on Tripadvisor.

Recently there have been reports of very long waits to get into the Colosseum, even if you have tickets. This is partly because of increased security and partly because the number of visitors often exceeds the maximum of 3000 people who can be inside at once. We waited almost an hour to get in this past June, although we had tickets already. An Italian newspaper recently reported waits of over an hour, and of people missing their tours because of the wait.

There is another way to see the underground area of the Colosseum. In high season, they have evening events, with a guide, called Luna sul Colosseo, which include the underground area.

http://www.coopculture.it/en/events.cfm?id=177

I have a feeling these are less likely to sell out, and there almost certainly wouldn't be a long wait to get in. Coopculture doesn't sell tickets to this; you have to call the number shown at the bottom right of the page. This "event" is not an entrance ticket, so if you want to see the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, you have to buy a separate ticket.

We have booked the underground tour directly on the website as described for our upcoming June trip. I purchased the tour tickets soon after the June dates were released, having to pick specific date and time. I am now going back on the site to purchase the entry tickets that are undated and will print them at home so that we may go to the Forum earlier if we want.

The instructions state to arrive at least 30 minutes before tour time to pick up tickets, but it sounds as if we may have to go even earlier and queue even though we have tour reservations because of the 3000 limit. Bummer.

I didn't know about the evening events and they had not been announced for this summer when I purchased by tour tickets. A friend of mine says she went to the evening event a few years a go and it was highlight of her visit--colosseum lit, no crowd, cooler. If I had the choice of the two, I would have chosen the evening event, though more expensive, just to avoid crowd. I have to buy entry ticket either way to see the Forum, etc.

Bvlenci - if you buy online you can't use the print at home voucher to enter the site - Forum/Palatine/Colosseum - you still must exchange it for a proper ticket at the ticket office.