guided tour or self tour - colosseum, forum, palatine hill

Dave, while the Colosseum is pretty easily understood without a tour, the Forum and Palatine are much more complex. IMHO, that's where a professional guide is of greatest benefit. They're also the most efficient way to cover ground. Guided tours which include all three generally run about 3-4 hours, and are not available through the official website. If interested, posters who've used a tour and can recommend their company of choice can pass those along. :O)

A guided tour can help you paint a picture of what you're seeing, and the stories behind it. For me, the Forum and Palatine Hill would have been piles of rubble without a guide.

@Kathy - so you think the tours are a good idea even if one is following along with the Rick Steves Audio Guides?

Hmmm, I'm not the best to answer that question as we didn't use the guide. Hopefully someone else who has can chime in? But the plus about an in-person guide is that you can ask questions, if you have them.

so you think the tours are a good idea even if one is following along
with the Rick Steves Audio Guides?

We tried the RS audio guide once in Florence and got so turned around we had no idea where we were supposed to go next. We were one and done. My official answer is its better than nothing.

We've used https://www.througheternity.com/ three times over the years and have never been disappointed.

We used a guided tour group for the Colosseum/Forum/palatine Hill package as suggested by RS (Roman Guy or Walks of Italy) and it's the best education and decision we ever made. Another reason to take a guided tour is I believe you can't go explore underneath the Colosseum without being part of a tour group.

We did the RS audio tour for the Colosseum and Roman Forum. They worked out really well! When we tried to do the Heart of Rome walking tour we got completely turned around.

Another reason to take a guided tour is I believe you can't go explore
underneath the Colosseum without being part of a tour group.

True but that section has been so difficult to obtain tickets for that even the tour companies haven't always been able to get them. They sell the tours in advance with the HOPE that they'll be able to get tickets, and cancel if they can't. I've no idea if that will change with the new ticketing company 'cause the bigger issue is that the space is just too limited to accommodate the huge number of tourists who want to see it.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/underground-colosseum-tour-cancelled
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/spain/just-cancelled-colosseum-underground-tour-forum-palatine-hill
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/colosseum-underground-tour-cancellation
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/colosseum-underground-palatine-hill-and-roman-forum-skip-the-line-tour-cancelled
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/colosseum-forum-palatine-hill-tour-canceled-6-days-out-by-the-roman-guy-tours-any-options

We were in Rome a few weeks ago and used Carpe Diem Rome (http://www.carpediemrome.com/) for an afternoon tour of the Colosseum With Arena Access, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum. Our guide was great and we were able to use a special group line to enter the Colosseum. We didn’t “skip the line” but our line was much shorter. We thought it was helpful having a guide to provide info and to answer questions.

PS - You’ll need to show your passport to enter.

I used Rick's audio when I was there in 2019. There were times I got turned around & had to go back 20 seconds or so. I remember feeling like I missed a lot & would like to do it again with a guide. I also took 3 years of Latin & have a pretty strong interest in Ancient Rome. I will revisit with a guide some time hopefully.

I did the underground tour of Colosseum which I enjoyed immensely.

Good news for the new website for Colosseum tickets! I was able to get on at 2:45am today and purchase 2 underground tour tickets for the Colosseum on May 9 in the afternoon. That is colosseo.it ; when you log on you are put into a virtual queue. Mine varied from 2 minutes to 4 minutes to 1 minute, then it opened up the reservation page. I was able to select the date I wanted for the tour; keep in mind that for the underground you book a "ticket" then you must select "guide" to combine it into a "guided tour". Total cost was $32 per person, the same as on the old Coop site. It worked very well. I will say when I tried to sine on during their "non business hours", I was not able to gain access. So the site must only be available to access at 8:30am Roma time.

Personal choice really. I'm not a fan of guided tours. Using a combination of the RS guides and info off of my offline Organic Maps app, I have all I need. If you want to know every detail of everything you're looking at, or are really into a certain aspect, a good guide will get you there. But I find I like to go at my own pace and will forget 95% of what a guide tells me. So I stay with a self guided tour.

10 years ago we had our first European adventure which included Rome. At the time the plan was to buy tickets to the sites and do it all on our own. I had no bias against tours, but I'd also never done a guided tour before. After days of trying to figure out the Colosseum and Vatican web sites, I threw up my arms in frustration and decided to spend extra and do both by tours. It turned out to be the right decision for us as the guides painted a picture of what we were seeing in a way we never could have on our own. But I wouldn't have known that without taking a tour. My advice is try both ways at least once to determine what is best for you.

We loved our small group tour of the Colosseum with LivTours. We probably could have done it on our own, but our guide gave wonderful context and really helped it come alive. Plus, I was concerned about securing tickets ourselves since we were there over the busy weekend.

We went to the Forum and Palatine Hill on our own, and I do wish I had thought to at least download an audio guide. There's a little bit of signage, but not much.

It is my understanding that the Underground tour must be with a guide.