Hey All. I am looking for some advice on how to maybe get a private tour guy to accompany us? So I was up at 3 am, my time, trying to secure Colosseum tickets - the website kept crashing - but I settled for four regular tickets (entrance, Palatine Hill and the Forum) on the morning of the day I wanted (Aug 9) - I panicked when I was not having success for either a tour or full experience and now I’m feeling regretful that we don’t have a tour. Is it possible to hire one of the official guides after securing our own tickets? How would I go about doing that? I would assume I would need to get a company who is on the official tour guides list? Thanks for your help and/or advice, in advance. Otherwise we will do Rick Steve's audio tour...
Posted by
Lynnwood, Washington
10586 posts
I would contact Roman Vacations.
https://www.roman-vacations.com/
I did their tour “ colosseum, Roman Forum, Palatine Hill small group” and was excellent. The small group was just 3 people, myself and a couple from Canada. It was extremely well done.
I do think that this is a location where having a guide does make a huge difference.
Posted by
163 posts
Our experience with Miles and Miles was beyond excellent. You might look at what they offer. https://www.milesandmiles.net/tours/rome
Posted by
78 posts
When we visited, we bought the same tickets you described and then used a private guide for the two of us. She was excellent.
Posted by
Minnesota 🎒
18402 posts
Here's where you might have an issue:
If you have already purchased general-entry tickets for Colosseum, you might not be able to use them for a price reduction on an on-site tour with an approved guide. I'll highly recommend a guided tour that includes the Palatine and Forum as well as the Colosseum as those other two sites are more complex, and the official website doesn't offer one of those: you'd have to book it through an indy company such as The Tour Guy, Walks of Italy, or one of the companies offered up in the previous threads.
In short, what I don't think you can do is show up at the Colosseum at your reserved time and buy a tour even just of the Colosseum. If you want to make use of your tickets + a tour, you'd have to contact a couple of tour companies and see what they'd allow as far as any discount. You might have to scrap your tickets and buy a tour for whatever time slot(s) they have open for your preferred date(s).
Posted by
Staffordshire, UK
45 posts
I think Kate is exactly right here, the problem is that when you buy a tour online, the price includes the entry ticket. You could try contacting the company directly and ask if they can honour your existing ticket without selling you a new one. Most likely they'll say "it is what it is" but it's worth a try. And yes you'd definitely want to cross-reference the tour operator with the official register of tour guides who are allowed to enter the Colosseum.
These days, I usually recommend people get Colosseum tickets through an officially-authorised 3rd party if they really have their heart set on either a tour or a Full Experience ticket. The Full Experience tickets are EXTREMELY difficult to get through the official site; I got "lucky" with attic tickets because I had a VPN, 5 devices, and I knew exactly how to deal with the website issues through a lot of research, and even then it took 3 hours...
By the way, the My Colosseum app (if you're thinking of self-guiding) was bad in my experience. All it did was read the same text of the signs that are around the Colosseum, and needed a constant mobile signal so it used up a lot of battery. It also can't be used simultaneously with your camera app so if you want to listen to the audio whilst taking photos, you have to keep stopping and restarting the tour. RS's audio tour is a lot better. You can also visit the Forum/Palatine Hill on either the day before or the day after your Colosseum entry time, you don't have to do them all at the same time. I visited the Forum and all of those sites the day before my Colosseum entry time and I'm glad I did because it was genuinely exhausting in the heat
Posted by
Minnesota 🎒
18402 posts
The Colosseum largely explains itself; the Forum without a storyteller
is beautiful rubble.
Absolutely. The Roman Colosseum is easily understood as the design so efficiently filled and emptied the arena of thousands of people in a hurry that it's still the model for many today. Just some advance reading-up or using the free RS audio tour should do ya. Large sections of the Underground are visible from points above so the mad scramble for required tours of that part isn't worth the angst, IMHO. The Forum and Palatine? Different animal.
The problem with splitting the arena and Forum/Palatine up over two different days - as allowed in a 24-hr period - is that it's not exactly an efficient use of time. As they are essentially right next door to each other, it makes sense to do one and then the others, or vice versa, although I get it about the heat factor.
Not ALL private guides are selling just their time, either. For instance, this one for just the Colosseum (LIV tours are one of the recommended Rick Steves guide companies) includes the tickets.
Issue? The guide would have to obtain a ticket for the same time slot as your previously purchased Colosseum timed-entry tickets. Possible? That could be as a line in the Parco ticketing info reads: "For accredited tour guides with Pass, it is not necessary to book the entrance online." So, it sure looks like their special guide's pass allows entry at any time without a ticket but you'd need to clear it with any guide in advance. Whatever the case, do not try to hire just anyone just hanging about outside of thing.
https://colosseo.it/en/tickets/colosseum-roman-forum-palatine/
Private guides are not inexpensive, given the amount of study/testing required for their accreditation, although a good one can be well worth the $$$. For an idea of what one can run for a Colosseum/Forum combo:
Posted by
Los Angeles
1960 posts
I’m feeling regretful that we don’t have a tour.
With a moderate amount of advance research, the Colosseum is largely self-explanatory. There are some interesting exhibits on the upper level illustrating how the structure was used through the ages.
I agree with those suggesting that a guide may be of greater value for the Forum/Palatine Hill, which is a collection of incomplete ruins. And in addition to the heat factor, attention span is another reason to consider visiting the Forum on a different day - Rome is so compact that it isn't much of a chore to get around.
Posted by
163 posts
In regards to the Forum, if you don’t go with a guide, our family of four enjoyed walking through on our own with the Forum Walk in RS’s book. It’s a lot to take in, but we took our time and took turns reading as we went along. It was fun. 🙂
Posted by
163 posts