Crowds in Rome

That sounds like good advice. I find myself very grateful to have visited Italy five times before Covid hit. I check in on various webcams and it looks absolutely crazy in Rome especially.

I was in Rome in mid June, yes it was busy but not, in my opinion, overly crowded. I still got to go to where I wanted.

My advice to anyone going to Italy this summer is stay away from Rome, Florence, and Venice

Great advice IF one has been fortunate enough to have been multiple times and already seen all that those locales have to offer.

Yes, joe32F, I would agree with you. Actually, I feel sorry for first time visitors (sort of, would still like to go back).

Well…we’ll just have do it. Mid July. The only time it works. Fortunately we (adults) have been there before. So… We don’t need to see all the sites. But our 5 grandkids have not. Have a tour reserved at Colloseum/Forum. Hope to get inside the Pantheon. We booked a family cooking class…Pizza and Gelato in Piazza Navona area. Staying near here. So hope we can find our way thru crowds and heat! But that may be all we can do and tolerate! My dear friend says it’s a good time to go. Dry weather over rainy days! We’ll see. Otherwise we have only done May and September. Both times had rain!?

Uh-oh. We're going to be there in August. All those places. With kids it's pretty tough to go anytime but summer. And there's no way we can miss the major sites since they haven't seen them. I guess we'll just try to follow Rick's guidance to get up early to see the big tourist draws and rest in the afternoon so we can enjoy the evenings.

We have done Rome many times, and never again would we do summer. The oppressive heat was worse than the crowds. And there were LOTS of people. Always book a hotel with AC! We went last October and it was packed - more crowded that we have ever seen it. We left early. For first times, know that when you go, be prepared and just know you will encounter crowds at all the sites, and restaurants at night. Travel is back!

The first time I was in Rome was August 1966 while on a high school trip to Europe. It was scorching hot and back then air conditioning was almost unheard of. Looking back at the photos I took in the Pantheon and the coliseum, plus St. Mark's square in Venice I was struck by how uncrowded the sites were.

The last time we (me plus the girl I fell in love with on the 1966 trip) were in Rome was December 2015. We took a lovely evening walk with a Walks of Italy tour. Our guide has spent over 30 years working as a guide in Rome.

We talked about the changes in tourism over the years. She pointed to when the Civitavecchia Port started docking all the cruise ships as a turning point in Rome tourism. They dump as many as 50,000 extra tourists a day in the city. She said from the time the buses start arriving from the port until they leave to take the tourists back to the ships, it's a nightmare. She said it's not only the sheer volume of the cruise ship day trippers, it's also their attitude. They want to see everything and live in fear they'll miss the bus back to the ship. Many become aggressive, pushing her and her clients out of the way and just being generally rude.

My wife and I are fortunate that we can travel off season. If at all possible, we don't travel overseas mid-May to mid-September. We avoid any places that can be reached by day trippers from cruise ships. Our experiences with cruise ship passengers mirror that of our WOI tour guide.

Overall tourism numbers are up this year. I think this is the first year post Covid most people feel comfortable traveling. We too will be traveling this year, but it will be in December.

Just got back from 10 days in Venice, Florence and Rome. Found Venice surprisingly not as crowded as expected except for Saturday. Florence was crowed but not so much you couldn’t walk (except on the bridge) and Rome was crowded but not what I was expecting from other post here in the Forum. I say go for it and just plan for crowds. The heat was another story. 100 degrees last week in Rome during our Coliseum tour which Walks had changed from 9:15am to 12:00pm!!!

Rome in summer sounds like an awful situation currently (heat and crowds). I don't know how we did it with such luck in June 2005. We actually only had one day in Rome before we needed to catch a train to Tuscany for a wedding. Maybe we got up super early? I remember my husband and I having the Spanish Steps completely to ourselves, seeing maybe 20 people in front of Trevi Fountain, walking right into the Pantheon (are people still dressing up as Roman soldiers out front to take photos with you?) and maybe a handful of people in the square around Trajan's Column. (No time for Forum or Coliseum). Somewhere in there we also grabbed a coffee and a gelato. I would have a really hard time physically and mentally being in Rome with all the people that travelers are describing now.

Can confirm! Rome these last couple of days has been pretty crazy and stupid hot BUT with pre-planning, we had/made reservations for everything (there’s no winging it anymore!!! must plan and have tickets/dinner reservations in advance) and stayed in Monti and took a few Ubers so it’s been fine. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of waiting in lines to see things in this heat/sun. Do your research! Plan ahead!

We spent three days in Rome in late June and it was hot and crowded, I think it was 97 on our arrival day, but sometimes you have to go when you can. (I had previously been there in late September which was much nicer. ) We got by this time with half-day (3-3&1/2 hrs) small group tours on separate mornings. I just wanted to add we did have trouble getting taxis a few times (you need to wait a a taxi stand) so if you have a timed ticket or need to meet a tour at a specific time and plan to use a taxi be sure to allow some extra time.

Just a quick second on the advice re: taxi availability...

We were in Rome mid-June and agree that the struggle to get a taxi is something that has to be factored in to your planning. Taxis are a marvelous way to mitigate the heat, and maybe walk 8 miles a day instead of 10+.

It's not a bad idea to factor in 30-45 minutes to secure a taxi - whether your hotel concierge is calling or you wait at a taxi stand. Where you're dealing with a timed entry, make sure to tack that cushion on top of the time it would take you to walk just in case.

Two of four mornings we had issues getting a taxi, and in one instance abandoned the attempt entirely for a sweaty 1.1 mile run-walk to avoid missing a timed entry. On that occasion we tried for a taxi for 30 minutes and were never able to get one via concierge OR taxi stand.

Both were morning attempts, FWIW.

Maybe the heat will scare off some of the crowds in the future. Of course, for some of us, that heat feels like home.

We're arriving the 28th of October and heading home Nov 8th. My wife backpacked through Europe in the late '70's and loved Italy. I have never been. We're flying into Rome and we're going to include Naples, Siena, Florence and more TBD. We'll be using the train between cities. I'm hoping that the weather won't be too cool though rain is likely (ponchos and rain coats). Originally we thought that September would be a good time but it sounds like that's a very busy time too.