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Colosseum Ticket Confusion

Thought I was knowledgeable about this stuff so tried to assist a friend going to Rome in late June.

He had his heart set on an Underground Tour and saw a few weeks ago no availability for his dates (or I should say only 1 ticket and they are a party of 2)
he should have purchased them months ago but is for their Honeymoon and had other things on his mind. I offered to help plan their trip itinerary as a friend since I knew they were stressed about it and I have been a few times to Italy.

Reading the website linked below a couple of weeks back I told him not to worry as it appears only a small number go available for quarterly tickets and the rest open up monthly which for June would be Monday the 7th of May. Told him to set his alarm so he could login and buy tickets at 3 AM his local time when they come available.
https://www.coopculture.it/en/ticket.cfm?office=Colosseo%2C%20Sotterranei%20%2C%20Terzo%20Ordine%20e%
20Belvedere&id=0&evento=6

Well 3 AM came and went and no tickets were added for the English tours for underground or for combo of belvedere and underground. Just Belvedere were added in English.

They did add the opportunity to buy tickets for Underground in either Italian, Spanish or French though.
I advised him to just purchase Italian or Spanish ones since the main arena you can use the audio guides they sell or Rick Steves free audio tour and the underground tour portion is not in English.

Think he is still debating that or to buy tickets from a tour company like Walks in Italy for more money and take the tour of the underground in English with them.

Did I give any bad advise? and I am still a little confused ; have to guess if it says quarterly they open them all quarterly and leave none for monthly. if it only states monthly availability than you can go buy the thought process I had.
So for other travelers ; if you want to get the Underground Tour in English be ready to purchase 3 months or more in advance right when they go on sale and don't wait.

Posted by
15863 posts

It'll be interesting to see if coopculture offers tour tickets on a quarterly basis after this last batch? As it stands now, they haven't indicated that they'll do so could be they'll go back to only a monthly basis (sales open on the 1st Monday of the month for the following month).

Guess we'll have to keep an eye on the site and see what shakes out?

Posted by
1829 posts

I had not recalled seeing the "quarterly" option before and in this case meant tickets for June sold all prior to May 1st.
Feel really bad because I gave advise that turned out to be not so good for my friend.

Really odd too that only English tours opened up as quarterly, all of the other languages did not.

Posted by
64 posts

I just purchased my tickets for the Underground and Arena tour in English on Monday. I also missed the quarterly sale of tickets because I thought the tickets were only available on the first Monday one month prior. I attempted this week to purchase tickets at 3:00 a.m. with no luck. I also tried calling the Ticket Center at 3:00 a.m. but was told they no longer sell Underground tickets by phone. I just happened to check the website again that morning at 8:30 a.m. and found five tickets available. I think more tickets are available for the Underground and Arena versus the Underground and Belvedere. Also, for reasons I can't explain, tickets appeared hours later.

Posted by
4152 posts

Tickets will appear later because of transactions that get rejected for one reason or another. If there are credit card issues or if someone buys too many tickets their transaction will be rejected and those tickets will be put back in the queue.

Donna