Success (mostly) purchasing Colosseum tickets for May on new ticketing site!

The new site does not seem to lock you out after multiple attempts to purchase— no more error messages and continued denial of access based on your server— thank goodness!

Ruth, I wish I would still use the applause emoji!!!!
10-star job covering the details of purchasing on the new site! **********!!!
Delighted to hear that once you're in that the process is straightforward/easy. I'd hoped this new site was going to be an improvement over Coopculture.

I am also looking to purchase tickets for the underground tour of the Colosseum for May 9 anytime. When I read the description for Single tickets, it no longer shows underground! Anyone have an idea what is going on? I will try to purchase on April 9, but looking for info so I can be prepared when tickets are released for the day. Thanks all.

Hello, thanks for the detailed explanation regarding the booking process on the new website. I am planning to book the arena tickets as well for a family of 3 (with one kid). The kid should get free entry but it's not clear in the website where I enter the kids age or whether I need to make a reservation for my child? I tried a dummy booking and all it asks are names of individuals and not age. So do I go ahead and book just 2 tickets and then show up at ticket counter of Colloseum and get the free ticket for my kid? Note I want to make sure we all have access to arena. Thanks.

Someone said it’s a soft open for the new ticket site. It says that Underground tickets will be available on April 8. I’m guessing that tickets including the underground for May 1 - 8 will all be available as of 8:30 a.m. (or thereabouts depending on the time of the first underground ticket) tomorrow (middle of the night tonight here in the US. There won’t be any tickets available for May 5 because that’s free Sunday. Not sure whether anything is open on the May 1st holiday, either.

Nairrn91, I am almost positive you need to buy the child’s ticket in advance. we’re going with a registered guide, and she was very clear that we would need to reserve a ticket for her, even though it is a free ticket, when we purchased ours. I didn’t look for children’s tickets but the guide ticket, which was easy to locate on the old Coop Culture site, wasn’t obvious. There was a box on the same page as the adult tickets — I didn’t understand what it was for but I clicked on it and there were other ticket choices, including the guide ticket. The children’s tickets might be located there.

Ruth, Thanks for the reply. I did see the Tour guide ticket option in the new website. But I did not see a children ticket option in there. I see conflicting info online, some say you can walk in with your tickets and collect tickets for your kids on-site but others say you need to have them in reservation even if free. I am thinking I might as well purchase tickets for the kids.

Thank you for all this great information! I want to make sure I understand. We have four adults and would like to visit the Colosseum on 6/18/24. We are not going to do a guide unless that is the only way we can get in. Would prefer to go in the morning, but will take whatever time of day we can get. Here are my questions:
1. Which ticket would youir recommend
Full Experience with Entry to the Attic or Full Experience-Underground Levels and Arena
2. Can I not buy tickets until it is one month out (i.e. buy tickets starting on 5/18/24) or should they be available now? Currently everything appears to be "no lnline tickets or sold out".
3. We live on the west cost of the united states. Tickets become available at 11PM my time so I will be online then. It looks like they gradually release them at different times during the day? Do I keep trying until I get some?

Thank you!

Hi Becky — our private guide recommended the Attico tickets but said the Arena tickets are also good. Unless you have a strong desire to do one or the other, I’d say time of day — especially in June — might matter more than which tour you choose. It could be extremely hot mid day, so I’d suggest early morning or late afternoon.

In our case the Attico tickets were not available on the date we wanted. The site went from not yet released to sold out immediately. I’m not sure why; after waiting for what should have been the first 3 releases of tickets we decided to opt for the Arena full experience tickets because they were available early morning.

I know in the past the underground tickets have been the hardest to get.

If you don’t want a guide you should be fine to tour on your own as long as you buy tickets as soon as they become available. They are released 30 days in advance. Right now they’re selling the first tickets for 8:30 a.m. (arena) and 8:50 a.m. (Attico). The arena tickets are released every 15 minutes for the corresponding time (in our situation 2:30 a.m. for 8:30 a.m. Rome time, etc. Buying a guided tour is great if you want to go that route but much much more expensive.

Does any one get this message?
Dangerous Web Page Blocked
You attempted to accesshttps://prenocolosseo-customer.midaticket.com/ExternalLogin/Login?context=MTK%5Cmts2ocustomercolosseobackoffice
This is a known dangerous webpage. It is highly recommended that you do NOT visit this pa

I am on this site https://ticketing.colosseo.it/en/checkout/?step=_first&gift=0,
Trying to purchase tickets for the FULL EXPERIENCE – SOTTERRANEI E ARENA – TURNI RISERVATI ALLE GUIDE and when I try to create an account like ask, I get the error message about, I have Norton Security on my computer.

Also when choosing guide pass, and it ask for guides name, is that just my name again,

Thank you for any help

I have no idea about the web page or warning — I did not see anything like this and the tickets I purchased seem legit. But I would be concerned if I saw something like that.

You only include a guide if you have made arrangements with a private guide that include touring the colosseum. In our case we have a half day booked with a private guide and she instructed us to obtain a guide pass for her along with our tickets. Her name is on the guide pass.

Thank you for your answer. Appreciate your help

Can you tell me where you found your guide and how much it cost. I am just looking for a guide so I can purchase the FULL EXPERIENCE – SOTTERRANEI E ARENA – TURNI RISERVATI ALLE GUIDE, since that is all that is available.

Thank you again

I don’t have anything above and beyond what Ruth described, but thought I’d chime in to say that even though I needed to stay up WAY past my bedtime last night, purchasing tickets to the Colosseum for a month from now was quite easy. I also really, really wanted attico tickets but dang people are fast (and there are only 8 per time slot). So we just have plain old regular tickets, but given that when I started researching this about 6 months ago those were also nearly impossible to get due to scalpers and resellers, this new system seems pretty darn awesome.

They do release the time slots as the clock ticks over and you can get thrown in the queue again (which means you’re for sure not getting those attico tickets :)).

Carrie

Wow, Carrie, I had NO idea they only released 8 Attico tickets per time slot. Makes me feel a little better about not getting them!!
How did you find that out? Do they hold other tickets back for tour groups?

I cannot remember where I learned that tidbit — maybe from the RomeWise YouTube channel? Anyway it’s a capacity/preservation thing — there are only 8 folks allowed per time slot I think mostly because the lift is small and slow. So I’d be really skeptical of any tour operator offering a tour including the attico unless it was small and private….

At what local time in Rome do Colosseum tickets become available? Or, if you prefer, at what Eastern Daylight Time? If I'm getting up in the middle of the night to buy tickets, it might as well be at the correct time.

Elizabeth -

The tickets release exactly 30 days prior to the day/time. So if you want tickets for 9:30am in Rome on May 15th, then they release at 9:30am (Rome time which is UTC +1) on Apr 15. I’d suggest using any of the various internet date/time conversion calendars to figure out what time (and day) that is in your time zone.

Carrie

I have a question on the 2-day tickets for the Coliseum tours. The website indicates the tickets are good for 2 days from first entry. Does that mean that if we purchase underground tickets for a Wednesday morning reserved time, that we can access for 2 days beginning on Wednesday morning (so Wednesday and Thursday), or can we actually access on Tuesday (the day prior to our reserved timeslot) and then on Wednesday? It's confusing to me and we're wondering if there's some flexibility in case of flight delays. Any thoughts?

Hi,
I’m looking to get 3 tickets to the underground levels and arena area for 5/27 around 12 pm. Any suggestion on the timing of when to log I ? I have tried some dummy runs but have found nothing at all for days in May. Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.
Kelly

Kelly... I got on the website at about 2:15am EST (8:15 Rome) to try to get tickets. I was very briefly(like 2 minutes) in a queue and then into the site. Nothing had opened yet for booking. At about 2:30am the links started to open up (color change if I remember correctly). I was trying to get the Underground with guided tour as first choice and then the underground or attic as my other choices. I spent significant time clicking through the different choices as things popped open, generally to have it tell me "insufficient tickets available" or similar (even when it showed "only 3 left" under a timeslot). I had almost given up and booked the arena tickets when all of a sudden one of my tries around 3:15 worked and there were 3 tickets in my cart. I ended up with the guided tour underground tickets for 1:30pm the day I wanted. I was so surprised when they appeared in my cart that I woke my husband up yelling OMG. The thing I am trying to say is keep trying for a while, it seems that tickets "expire" in other people's carts and become available randomly. It also seemed that there was little rhyme/reason to which time slots opened when. It was not exactly at the 1:30 time in Rome when I was able to book that timeslot. I feel like it was a bit chaotic trying to keep refreshing and clicking around on the different options and times, but it was worth being up to try. I had also done a practice run through the site and that helped some. I hope this helps a bit and good luck getting the tickets you want!

Having read all the very helpful discussion on the Travel Forum about obtaining Colosseum tickets, I was expecting difficulties. As it turned out, the process went very smoothly, perhaps partially because I wanted the basic 18 Euro tickets. I wanted the first available entry time: 8:30 a.m.. Yesterday morning at 1:31 a.m. CDST (8:31 a.m. Rome time), I ordered tickets for May 23 at 8:30 a.m. I did not have to wait in a queue and had no difficulty getting my credit card payment processed.

Should I go in and create an account the day before I plan to purchase tickets?

I live in Canada's EST. I thought the ticket drop time was 9:30 a.m. in Rome, so I didn't start clicking on the site until 3:10. At that point, I was 18 minutes down the queue and hoping others would drop off...not realizing, now that I've read all the posts above, that it had opened 40 mins. earlier [doh!].
I got in around 3:21 a.m. and bought two FULL EXPERIENCE – UNDERGROUND LEVELS AND ARENA – GUIDED TOUR. I was pretty chuffed at my success and all done, with tickets, by 3:26 a.m.
To respond to aanders question, you should create an account first. That would be really helpful. When you buy through your account, your tickets and POP will likely stay there--maybe Ruth can tell you that for sure. I didn't realize that was something to do in advance. I was prompted to open an account, but I didn't in case it threw me out of the site [Yes. Total lack of confidence in the site, given experiences trying to book a train in Italy.].
Back to my story, by the time I got in for the tours on May 26, there were single tickets available for two morning slots, but the first two-ticket availability was 12:15pm. I snagged them and at some point I ticked a box for the Underground portion, which added €8 to each ticket. After all was paid and tickets delivered for download and email, although I was doing this on my iPad, I couldn't put it into my Apple Wallet. Oh, well!
Then, I noticed on my pdf ticket the word "guide" was not included on the list of what's included...even though I thought I was buying a "guided tour"...or at least it says that on the colosseo site. Maybe an error in translation, I thought? I started combing through the "misleading and misinformed" web and got nervous about the number of bloggers saying it wasn't a tour guide, but more of an escort/accompanying person.
Got up after some sleep, went to the only place I could find to contact the Colosseum in writing--Facebook--and started asking my questions. I thought (now it's ±11:00 a.m. EST) that they might not answer until tomorrow. I asked if we would have a real tour guide or an escort, among other questions. They responded in 30mins. with all the answers to my questions.
1. Do we have a real guide? My ticket has "Intero Full Experience (24.00 €) + Visita Guidata Sotterranei ($8.00)"--that means we paid an extra €8 (the $ is a typo on the ticket) for a guide.
2. What does the guide do? The tour guide will walk with you and give you information about the arena and underground. For the rest of the tour you will have a free audio guide available for downloading.
3. How many people in our group? Do not know at the moment, but maximum will be 25.
They also thanked me for contacting them directly. Isn't that nice? Very lovely people.

I, too, am looking for the answer to the question, "Can we do the Forum the day before the Colosseum?" I'm hoping someone here can answer that. I haven't found it on a reliable site yet, but I have sent an email to coopculture, since they are still responsible for tickets until the end of this month. ....and, after peppering their FB messaging with questions, I'll hold off asking that one on FB until tomorrow.

I hope this helps the next person as much as the previous posters above have helped me. Kind regards,

I have 1 ticket full experience with underground directly from colosseum official site. I needed two but was only able to grab one and I can name change one time. Message me if interested! May 25 at 10:45am

This was very helpful, thank you.

We were trying to book for the underground next month. We were on the site 5 mins before the earliest ticket time local Rome time and... while there were time slots available selecting any of them said there was insufficient availability. Then the available time slot selections started disappearing. We were trying to get two tickets and experimented with trying for just one. Nope, nothing has sufficient availability. We changed course and were able to get attico tickets which is fine as that is what we planned to do next time we visit, so we'll just reverse it.

Has anyone bought the annual Park Membership on the website Parco archeologico del Colosseo ? It says for $80 (euro) gets free admission for 2 adults + 3 children (under 18), including Arena and SUPER surcharges.

Has anyone tried calling the number (39 06 399 67 700) to purchase tickets? Do the call center employees speak english?

Very useful information here, thank you to everyone for sharing!
Does anyone know what is the latest time slot? I understand they run every 30 min?
Do tickets open 30 days prior to the visit date, at a time of the visit's time slot?
I am yet to have all that fun when trying to book tickets for my daughter and myself!

Dreammarinka, as I shared in a post above, I wanted basic 18 Euro Colosseum tickets for May 23 at the first available entry time: 8:30 a.m.. On April 23 at 1:31 a.m. CDST (8:31 a.m. Rome time), I ordered tickets for May 23 at 8:30 a.m. At that time, the only May 23 time slot shown on the website was for 8:30 a.m. tickets. That suggests to me that on April 23, additional time slots for May 23 were shown on the website as time passed....so that a wise strategy is to log on to the ticketing website 30 days to the minute before the time slot you want.

Thanks, Elizabeth, for the detailed response!

I had almost given up and booked the arena tickets when all of a sudden one of my tries around 3:15 worked and there were 3 tickets in my cart

Congrats on getting the tickets. It seems impossible!!! What time was this in Rome? And what did you do, were you still on the insufficient quantity screen and just pressed refreshed?

When I did a test run recently, at about 8:30am Rome time, the day becomes clickable and after clicking I see the times for the entire day. But when I try to click on any of them, it says insufficient quantity, are you saying tickets are not available until that time. So for example the 10am one is not released until 10am Rome time that day even though the time slots are clickable at 8:30am?

It seems impossible!!!

It does seem impossible! I tried to do some test runs the other day, and I was on the site for about 2 hours. I kept refreshing the page, especially at each time the time slots supposedly had to open up, but no success! The day / time slot would become available, but when I click on it, it would say "insufficient amount". Also, unfortunately, the site doesn't preserve user's preferences, so every time I'd refresh the page, I would have to again select the right date and the amount of tickets.

Our first trip to Rome is coming up, and I was very confused about getting Colosseum tickets. This thread helped a lot. I’m adding my own experience of this past weekend, hoping it will help some other confused person. As with Ruth at the start of this thread, we are in upstate NY. I figured out what day I had to be on the computer at 2:30 AM (8:30 AM Rome time) to get tickets for our desired date and created my account on the site in advance. I signed in well before 2:30 AM. The sale date did not open at 2:30 AM, it was more like 10 minutes later. During the interim I was anxiously checking my calendar to make sure I had the right day and refreshing over and over again. I have no idea if the system kept me logged in or not. As I was about to burst into tears of frustration the date opened. A series of timeslots starting at 8:30 AM and going to the end of the day were displayed. I started with the earliest slot trying to get 2 tickets for the Full Experience Underground and Arena. The site kept returning the message that there was insufficient quantity. I kept rotating through the time slots and refreshing. Meanwhile the 8:30 slot sold out and closed. I kept rotating and refreshing. Suddenly an 8:45 slot appeared in the mix. I kept rotating through the times and refreshing, and as luck would have it one of the tries was successful and two tickets for the 8:45 slot appeared in my cart, which had an unnerving countdown timer of about 2 minutes. Like when you initiate the autodestruct sequence on your starship. Nothing happened when I tried to complete the sale and my cart timed out. Then my cart reappeared with the two tickets and a countdown timer of about 15 minutes. I am not sure how that happened. It may have been a result of refreshing my screen in the moment or could have been a holdover from a previous refresh. I tried to complete that sale. It took a long time for the next screen to appear – so long that I thought this attempt was going to fail too, but eventually another screen appeared and from then on the sale went through somewhat normally, Except for needing to acknowledge that certain size groups require a certain audio system. This didn’t make sense to me because 2 tickets is well below the certain size, but I acknowledged anyway and the next screen appeared. I proceeded to pay for the tickets. The site never asked me to log in to my account. Maybe I was still logged in from when I started this process. All in all, it took about an hour. Key points: The site may not open on time. New time slots may appear. Keep trying. Keep an eye on your cart.

Lily, thank you so much for sharing your experience! This sounds so... how should I say it? ..well, plain terrible. Seems to be even worse than booking Vatican Museums. I am anxiously waiting for when my time to book comes! :)
Have a wonderful time in Italy and safe travels!

Another hapless traveler trying to book the underground tour here. I'm dry running at 1:30 am the day before (and not happy about it), especially because the underground didn't show up at 1:30 and the arena (my 2nd choice) was sold out by 1:32 when I checked it.

But I do have a question. The times I see for the underground tour in English are 10:45, 11:45, 12:15, 1:30, 2:15. Italian 10:00 and 12:00. Are these always the available times?

I would also mention that these times came up about 1:45, I think. Wasn't paying as much attention at that point. And all the times for the day showed up at the same time.

I don't know what is more annoying... The anxiety from waiting in the queue and then finally getting in and feeling panicked OR clicking on your prefered date (the website showing there are available tickets) only to get to the time slot, select your number of tickets (in my case 3) and getting the dreaded "Insufficient availability for the selected time". What's frustrating to me is that I have to first put in how many tickets I am interested in before even picking a date. I have gone between each time slot available on June 15 for Full Experience Guided Tours about ten times at least and NONE of them are giving me any hope that I will be able to get tickets. If I select 3 and there aren't any tickets available for three people then don't show me the dates/times. I've been at this since 2:55 this morning and I am simply frustrated, tired, and ready to give up..

But I do have a question. The times I see for the underground tour in
English are 10:45, 11:45, 12:15, 1:30, 2:15. Italian 10:00 and 12:00.
Are these always the available times?

According to this post over on TA (see #50), those are the times the tour is available in English.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187791-i22-k14717647-o40-New_Notice_on_Parco_Archeologico_Del_Colosseo_Website-Rome_Lazio.html

In addition to the tips for purchasing tickets on this thread, this one over TA might be of help as well. The OP is an expert for Rome (has a property there) and knows their stuff.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187791-i22-k14752838-New_Colosseum_Website_as_of_1_May_2024-Rome_Lazio.html

Lastly, just a reminder that ANYTHING involving the underground is going to be THE most difficult ticket to get. Personally, I wouldn't drive yourselves insane trying to do that; you can see down into a large section of it from above. Of the 3 sites (Colosseum, Palatine, Forum) this is the easiest to understand as sports arenas are built to similar plan today! With an audioguide or just some reading up in advance, this one can successfully be done with a general-entry ticket. The Palatine and Forum are more complicated sites that really benefit from a tour. Those are not currently offered by the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo organization but combo tours of all 3 sites - fewer are including the underground than in years before - are available by some independent companies. These generally last 3-4 hours and come with a price tag but are worth the euros if one has a genuine interest in the larger complex,

Looks like total failure. I had two tabs open, one staying on underground and cycling back and forth between May/June, the other initially looping through the ticketing homepage to Full Experience Arena.

Full Experience Arena was gone by 1:32. Never even saw the new day come up clear. So I switched to looping the underground tour in that tab.

About 1:45 I started getting gateway timeouts. Never could get any response at all. Finally tried on my phone and got the virtual queue. Tried incognito window and also got the virtual queue. Then cleared cookies in the main browser and got virtual queued there too. At first I thought my session had been flagged or something, but then I realized that the virtual queue is probably served by a different server, and the 503 gateway timeouts were just the colosseum website crashing. What an unbelievably sh** system. Whoever designed it should be fed to the lions.

I should be able to get the regular tickets with no extras one i make it through one of these virtual queues.