The Best Colosseum Tour in Rome? Our Walks of Italy Experience

Should You Book a Guided Tour or Do It Yourself?

Obviously, the answer to this question is going to depend on a bunch of different factors – your timing, budget, and patience for learning about history. 

In general, over the past several years, I’ve come to the realization that it is almost always worth the extra money to have a local guide show you around a place or city. 

We have a strong opinion here, mostly informed by the fact that we did this amazing tour (the one we’re talking about in this guide) where we learned that some (really, most) of the things we thought we knew about the Colosseum were actually just fairy tales. 

No, the battles weren’t gruesome and bloody.

No, they didn’t execute Christians en masse.

No, they didn’t have naval battles inside the Colosseum (for the most part, anyway). 

Matt actually returned to Rome with his mom and uncle this year and did the same exact tour (basically), and it was equally impressive and covered new ground in the Forum, even for him. 

The richness of the detail and context our guide was able to bring to our understanding took the experience to the next level for us, and we’d highly, highly recommend investing in a tour.

Without those stories, it’s hard to understand the significance of what you’re seeing, especially in the Forum, which is mostly ruins at this point. 

Remember, we had both experienced the Colosseum before. MULTIPLE TIMES before that eye-opening tour, and we still learned a ton. 

That, my friends, is the power of taking a tour with a guide who actually knows what they’re talking about.

You’ll get to go a level deeper and learn about the structure beyond the fairy tales and myths that have been perpetuated for decades. 

Having done it both ways, I can definitively say that a guided tour is the way to go when it comes to the Colosseum and Roman Forum, two sites that can be difficult to imagine at their peak, when this was the center of Roman life. 

Without that richness and context, you’ll probably be walking through the Roman Forum and seeing some old, broken buildings, which will take you all of 30 minutes before you’re ready to move on. 

Which Tour Should You Choose?

At this point, we’ve done three different Colosseum tours with Walks of Italy (and six tours total across Italy) over the past five years, though only two of them are still running at this point (RIP to the very cool after hours night tour). 

There are four different versions of the Colosseum tour that we did that currently exist, and we’d really only consider three of them. 

Those three versions of the tour are: 

The Premium Colosseum Guided Tour with Roman Forum & Palatine Hill: The original, and the most basic of the three. This is the version of the tour we did on the first go-around, where Dario was our guide.

It’s a three hour tour, and it includes plenty of time both inside the Colosseum and inside the Forum and Palatine Hill. The big thing that it does NOT include is access to the arena floor. 

The Colosseum Arena Floor Tour: Special Access via the Gladiator’s Gate: This is the tour I did with my family on my last visit.

The biggest difference between this tour and the first one is the fact that you enter the Colosseum through the Gladiator’s Gate, which brings you out to the arena floor.

It’s a stunning perspective of the building, and you still get to go up to the main levels for the views from there. 

Colosseum Tour with VIP Caesar’s Palace & Roman Forum Super Sites: This tour is a variant of the first tour with more of a focus on the Forum.

It gives you access to a couple of sites that are ordinarily closed to the public, like Caesar’s Palace and the House of Augustus, which rotate depending on what is open at the time of your visit.

Then you do the same version of the Colosseum tour as the one described in this guide. 

Unless you’re extremely into Roman history, it’s probably worth choosing between the first two tours in that list. 

Between those two tours, the big difference is whether or not the access to the arena floor, which is pretty cool, is worth the price premium. Other than that, the two tours are extremely similar. 

What To Expect on Your Colosseum Tour

First of all, expect at least a few of the facts you thought you knew about the Colosseum to be flat out wrong. 

At one point, Dario, our excellent guide, posed the group a question; how many times do you think the Colosseum was used per year?

Alysha’s guess was four times a year. Because quarterly, right?

Wrong. Turns out, the answer is less than once a year, which blew my mind. They have this giant, spectacular structure, but it’s only used for one thing, and that one thing only happens once a year, if that? Wild. 

I’m not going to spoil the other myths that got busted along the way, but trust us, there are going to be a few. 

You’ll start your day at the meeting point near the Colosseo Metro stop, an easy walk from the Centro Storico, Monti, or even Termini (we ended up walking after the line to buy tickets for the metro at Termini was gigantic), where you’ll meet your guide, get an introduction to the day ahead, and get a headset. 

At first, we thought headsets were lame, but as the tour progressed, we realized that if every single guide was yelling to make sure the entire group could hear, the entire place would be more chaotic and crazy than it already is.

Plus, the headsets save the guide’s voices. 

From there, you’ll enter the Colosseum, which is a breeze because you get to use a separate line saved for guided tours, and your guide will do the talking (in Italian) and all you have to do is put your bag through the scanner and say “grazie” as you walk by the security team. 

You’ll head to the Colosseum and get your first glimpse of the interior.

After a few pictures, you’ll find a nice shady spot to sit down and talk about the history around you (and do some myth busting too).

After the first level and a history lesson, you and the group will head up to the second level, which is where some of our favorite photo spots of the day were.

Eventually, you’ll end your time after spending a few minutes at the northwestern side looking at the Arch of Constantine (where another myth gets shattered) before exiting the Colosseum and moving on to the Forum. 

Finally, you will enter the Forum – which is again super easy thanks to the skip-the-line aspect and the fact that your guide is there to do the talking – and head to the Imperial Forum to see a few of the sights on Palatine Hill before moving on to the core of the Forum.

You’ll end with a stop at the place where Julius Caesar was cremated (though, SPOILER ALERT, we learned that he actually didn’t die in the Forum as we know it today, but over near Largo di Torre Argentina in the Centro Storico).

Over the course of the entire tour, Dario (our guide) pointed out little details that we NEVER would have noticed on our own, like the reliefs featuring gladiators in their full garb inside the Colosseum, or the reliefs on the Arch of Titus depicting the triumphal procession after the sack of Jerusalem during the Jewish War in Judea in the 1st Century C.E.

Those are just two examples of richness that Dario brought to our tour that made our experience that much more memorable and immersive. 

Things to Know Before Your Tour

If you decide to go ahead and book this tour, there are a few things to know before you show up for the tour. 

Rome is hot during the summer months (and spring and fall, but less so). The entirety of this tour takes place outside. Dario did a pretty good job at making sure we had shade, plenty of water breaks, and more, but the portion in the Forum got hot. 

Bring a reusable water bottle, a hat, sunscreen, and sunglasses and be prepared to be in the sun for long stretches. 

For whatever reason, the stairs in the Colosseum are super steep. You can take the elevator for some of them, but be prepared to traverse at least one set of steep stairs over the course of the day. 

Bring walking shoes. And leave the stilettos at home. You’ll be covering a lot of ground, particularly in the Forum, so you’ll want comfortable footwear. The ground is also mostly cobblestone, which aren’t exactly known for being even or flat.

Bring your ID (in this case, your passport). They are strict about the name on your ID matching the name on your ticket, and they will check. Make sure everyone has their ID!

Skip-the-line only allows you to skip one line, but there is a second line. We’ve gotten (somewhat angry) notes from readers before who are frustrated that they still had to wait in a line despite doing a “skip-the-line” tour, which is absolutely true. 

There are two lines out front – the line for the ticket office (this is what you’re skipping) and the security line (this is what you and everyone else have to wait in) – and you get to skip the longer, slower line for the ticket office and head straight to the security line, which tends to move fairly quickly. 

Budget plenty of travel time to make it to your time slot. Traffic through the historic center is rough, which affects buses, and the metro from Termini can be SUPER busy at peak hours. 

We’ve made the mistake of thinking we had plenty of time to grab the metro, entering the Termini metro station, and seeing a ticket line (for the machines) with somewhere around 100 people in it. Walk if you can, and you’ll bypass all of that. 

Don’t eat within a few blocks of the Colosseum. With very few exceptions, the restaurants around the Colosseum are something you should avoid. You’ll pay a premium for mediocre (in the best case scenario) food. 

Don’t miss the viewpoints outside the Colosseum. There are a couple of good views of the Colosseum on the eastern side of the structure – namely the Giardinetto del Monte Oppio (here on Google Maps) and the Ponte degli Annibaldi (here on Google Maps).

It is worth going before or after your visit to capture the grandiosity of the building!

If a guided tour isn’t in the cards for you, we have an entire separate guide dedicated to visiting the Colosseum with all the important information you need to know to do it independently – like what to see, how to get tickets, and the best time to visit – which you should read for far more detail than we have here.

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