Heading to Rome this weekend! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 1 (pricey) ticket gets you into the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palatine Hill. How much time will all of this take? Just trying to figure out how early of a start we need to get, especially since we'll also be fighting an early sunset this time of year (I believe they all close at 4:30 though anyway). Thanks!

I think people differ in how long they spend at these sites. I spent the better part of a day at the Colosseum and Roman Forum, and didn't make it to Palatine Hill. Hope that helps!

the palatine hill is below the forum. i remember we just strolled right in once we exited the colosseum. no admission. i think its free? or is combined with the colosseum.

oh by the way. palatine hill is sort of a climb up, an incline. we were just too tired for this, and were distracted by the roman forum, so we just entered the forum never climbing up to the hill. we may never know what we actually missed...

It does depend on your interests, but if you visit all three places (they are on one ticket), I would say between two hours and half a day. I'm assuming that you'll be using some sort of guide book to help you on your visit. The Colosseum has detailed, informative signs, but as I recall, neither of the other places does. Except that there are some signs for the Forum on the fences outside the Forum.

The Palatine is the most ruinous and hardest to understand where everything is/way, IMHO. We've visited the Colosseum and the Forum several times, but the Palatine only once.

Just got back from Rome last night-weather was beautiful and the place was empty despite the World Food Bank convention in town. Helicopters overhead particularly around the Via Veneto and Spanish Steps.
Plan most of your time at the Forum and the Colosseum.Palantine Hill is a walk through.

I recommend at least 6 hours to see all three reasonably well. We found it worked to divide them up into Forum and Colosseum one day, Palatine the next morning. The Forum used to be free but is now part of the combined ticket. I think you need a good guide book or a guide to understand/appreciate any of them. Also decent weather.
I would rate the Palatine higher than the last two posters.

The Forum has an audio guide available for rental; it didn't impress us a couple of weeks ago. We are history buffs and yet found this to be dry, and hard to follow. We spent about two hours at the Forum and about 45 minutes at the Colosseum.
On the Rick Steves website there are free downloadable audio self-guided walks for the Forum and Colosseum, and I think them very good. But the best experience I had touring the Forum and Colosseum, with with a guide from Context Rome.
For the two venues, they used to allow 4 hours.

We were lucky to have a wonderful guide of palatine hill and the forum. He was a graduate student in history, and he really made the place come alive with his stories of what transpired where. Very interesting. Between that tour and the Colosseum tour, we spent at least half a day.

We went to the Forum first - it's a shorter queue to buy the combo tickets. We spent hours and hours there and then explored Capitoline Hill which was fabulous. Later in the day we headed to the Colosseum and then by keeping to the left hand side of the queue that was waiting to purchase tickets, we quickly went through the security check and were inside. Too easy!! After that we went to Palatine Hill and them made our way down to Circus Maximum where we collapsed on the grass for a while.

We used the Rick Steves audio guides - we downloaded them to ipods before we left home, he is a bit corny, but we enjoyed them anyway.