Colosseum Underground Tour: Booking Tickets and Review

The Colosseum only sells timed-entry tickets, and they sell out weeks ahead, so booking before you fly matters more for this sight than for almost anything else in Italy. This guide covers how to book official tickets, then walks through what it’s actually like on the underground tour I took through the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, run by the operator then trading as Walks of Italy and now as WalksDevour.

How to book Colosseum tickets

Booking Colosseum tickets means going through the site’s own ticketing platform, ticketing.colosseo.it, where a standard combined ticket covering the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill costs €18 ($21, £15) and is valid for 24 hours across all three sites on a single entry each. The official park operator states plainly that “ticket sales, with compulsory reservation of the time slot for entry to the Colosseum, open 30 days before the date of the visit,” so tickets are not sold at the door and same-week availability is rare in high season.

Buying through the official site or its authorised reseller CoopCulture is worth doing even though third-party tour and ticket resale sites are easy to find in a search, since those sites typically charge well above the €18 official rate for what is, at its core, the same entry ticket bundled with extras. If you specifically want underground and arena-floor access, that requires either the park’s own “Full Experience” ticket tier or a guided tour built around it, like the one reviewed below, since the standard €18 ticket only covers the upper levels, the Forum and Palatine Hill.

What happens if tickets are sold out

Checking back at the same time of day the tickets first went live is worth doing if your date shows as sold out, since the official site releases its full 30-day window of slots at once and a handful of cancellations trickle back in as other visitors rearrange their plans. A guided small-group tour is the other reliable option, since operators like WalksDevour hold blocks of tickets bought in advance and can often get you in on dates the general-admission calendar shows as full, which is one of the practical reasons to book a guided tour rather than only a reason to want a guide’s commentary.

How much time to allow

Seeing the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill properly takes a minimum of three hours, and closer to a full morning or afternoon if you want to read the information panels or linger in the Forum rather than move through it quickly. Arriving at your booked entry time is enforced at the Colosseum gate, so build in extra time to get through the airport-style security line beforehand rather than cutting your arrival close.

Best time of day to visit

Booking the first entry slot of the day, right after the Colosseum opens at 8:30am, avoids both the worst of the heat in summer and the biggest crowds, which build steadily from mid-morning onward. A late-afternoon slot in the two hours before closing is the other quieter window, since most tour groups and day-trippers have already moved on by then.

The VIP Colosseum Underground Tour with Roman Forum and Palatine Hill

Taking this Walks of Italy tour meant getting guided access to the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill in one outing, plus areas of the Colosseum that standard ticket holders can’t reach. I don’t usually go for guided tours, since I’d rather explore alone and look things up later, but two charismatic guides on this tour changed my mind.

The Roman Forum

Our tour started at the Roman Forum, where our guide Cecilia explained the history behind ruins that are easy to walk past without context, such as a temple reduced to three standing columns. She carried a set of printed reconstruction images to show what each ruin looked like intact, which made it far easier to picture the Forum as the center of ancient Roman life: the site of processions, elections, speeches, criminal trials and gladiator matches, and often called one of history’s most significant meeting places.

Palatine Hill

Palatine Hill, the centermost of Rome’s seven hills, looks down over the Roman Forum on one side and the Circus Maximus on the other, and today its open lawns are as much a spot for locals to relax in the sun as a historic site. Cecilia’s explanation of the Flavian Palace stood out here: from bare ruins alone, it’s hard to picture a structure with towering walls, large rooms and fully mosaicked floors, but her description made the scale click.

Both the Forum and Palatine Hill are open enough that you can walk almost anywhere, without ropes or marked paths keeping visitors off the ruins, which makes an expert guide even more valuable for understanding what’s actually beneath your feet. At one point our small group was walking through what used to be the Flavian Palace when Cecilia pointed down at the floor: we had been stepping on an ancient mosaic the whole time, so dulled by dust and foot traffic that it was barely recognisable as one until she wet a section of it to bring the colours back. Standing there, it was hard not to wonder how much of that detail gets worn away a little more with every visitor who walks across it unknowingly, even while understanding that a site this size can’t realistically be roped off section by section.

The Colosseum

The tour’s final stop was the Colosseum itself, and being part of a guided group meant skipping the long general-admission line entirely, worth the price of the tour on its own during peak season. I could easily have spent another two hours in the Forum and on Palatine Hill alone, but the Colosseum was worth saving the remaining energy for.

Underground access and fun facts

The Colosseum is the largest amphitheater ever built, standing 50 m (164 ft) tall and constructed from stone and concrete under Emperor Vespasian between 72 and 80 AD. It could reportedly fill with its full capacity of 50,000-80,000 spectators in around 15 minutes, thanks to a numbered entrance system, and admission to games was free but required a ticket that assigned seating by social class.

The tour’s highlight was entering through the Colosseum’s Gate of Death, the gate through which dead gladiators and executed prisoners were removed from the arena, also known as the Libitinarian Gate after Libitina, the goddess of funerals. Part of the original arena floor has been reconstructed near this gate, which lets you look down into the underground level from above the way a standard ticket holder would, right before you go down into it yourself as part of the guided group.

From the gate, we descended into the underground level itself, which general-admission visitors can only view from the stands, and saw several of its rooms along with the lift mechanisms once used to raise gladiators, animals and stage scenery into the arena above. Cecilia pointed out that the basic shape and layout the Romans used here, tiered seating around a central performance floor with service areas below, is still how modern stadiums are built, even though the technology inside has obviously moved on. Historians estimate several hundred thousand people and roughly a million animals died in the Colosseum over its centuries of use. The tour finished at the top tier, which is also only accessible with a guided ticket, giving a panoramic view back over the whole structure and across to Palatine Hill.

By the time I sat down to write about the tour afterward, I was surprised by how much of what Cecilia told us had stuck. Some of that comes down to the Colosseum itself being a genuinely remarkable piece of engineering, but a large part of it was down to the guides. Our small group ended up joining another Walks of Italy group partway through, and their guide was just as sharp as ours, so the quality wasn’t a matter of getting lucky with one particularly good guide.

The verdict

I got real value from this tour, since Cecilia answered every question thoroughly and the underground access alone isn’t something you can arrange on a standard ticket. I recommend it for anyone visiting Rome who wants context beyond what a self-guided walk can give. Other travellers seem to agree: the tour operator’s own site shows thousands of five-star reviews for its Colosseum tours, though it’s worth reading a handful of recent ones yourself before booking, since guide quality and tour inclusions can shift over time.

I was a guest of Walks of Italy on this tour, and it convinced me that a guided, educational tour can genuinely be worth it, even for someone who usually prefers exploring alone.

Practical information about the Walks of Italy Colosseum tour

Prices for guided Colosseum underground tours change often and vary by group size and season; check the current rate and exact inclusions before booking, since tour operators periodically rename or restructure their underground-access products. See current pricing and availability for the equivalent tour, now listed as the Premium Colosseum Tour with Roman Forum and Palatine Hill.

Where to stay in Rome

I spent three nights at the vintage Il Boom B&B in Trastevere, a quieter neighborhood than the historic center and an easy walk or short bus ride from the Colosseum. Check availability, prices and reviews. For a broader search across Rome, comparing hotels on Booking.com covers neighborhoods closer to the Colosseum if Trastevere’s distance doesn’t suit your plans.

How to get to Rome

I flew direct from Brussels to Rome and took the train into the city center from the airport. Check train options here. Click here to find flights. If you’re already elsewhere in Italy or Europe, FlixBus coaches are a budget alternative to flying in.

Don’t forget travel insurance

Travel insurance covers you if part of your trip is cancelled, you get sick or hurt abroad, or your electronics break or get stolen. Check out SafetyWing. Their plans are flexible enough to sign up for even after a trip has started, and their claims process handled a personal COVID claim without complications.

You might also like: How to spend four days in Rome: an itinerary and eating your way through Rome with Eating Europe Food Tours.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her trip to Rome, where she toured the Colosseum’s underground level with Walks of Italy and stayed in Trastevere. The team covers Italy for independent travellers, including the tours, hotels and booking logistics worth knowing before a Rome trip, and updates this page when prices and booking rules change.