Musei Borghese and Roma Pass

What I did was I emailed my hotel and asked them to make a reservation for me. They were very happy to do so. They will give you a confirmation number which you need to take with you when you visit the museum.

As an aside, be aware that there is no advantage to buying the Roma Pass ahead of time since you still have to go and pick it up (it will not be mailed to you). We bought ours in the train station upon arrival in Rome.

You haven't missed anything - if you want to use the Roma Pass for the Borghese Gallery, you have to call to make a reservation. But there are various ways to make inexpensive calls to Europe.

1. If you are set up for Skype, you can add some credit to the account, and calls to Italy are something like $0.02 per minute.

2. You can set up an account with a service like OneSuite or PennyTalk, if you will be making more calls to foreign countries from your home phone. These services also have access numbers in many countries, making it cheap to call back home.

3. If this is the only international call you will make and you don't want to commit to a plan like those above, you can use a service like 10-10-987: http://www.1010987.com/. They will charge $0.11 per minute plus $0.83 to connect, so a 5 minute call to Italy costs $1.38, and a 10 minute call is $1.93. Even rounding up, $2 is quite cheap to make sure you have a reservation.

Do be sure to make the reservation before you get there - by all accounts, most viewing times at the Borghese sell out.

EDIT: I was cross posting with EmergencyDoc, and his idea works well too - I'd start with that.

Have you been reading the Italy Forum here for some time? It is frequently mentioned - you could try the search facility at the top of the page and search on Borghese - here that if you will use the Roma Pass you MUST (it even says it on the pass website) telephone a reservation to the Galleria Borghese.

You cannot use the online ticket facility to make a reservation for the Galleria Borghese. Maybe you can get your hotel to do it for you, or you can call yourself. In these days of Skype the call is only pennies - although you don't say where you are so rules may be different if you are in North Korea or somewhere.

That is the only place you need to do that with the Roma Pass.

Why, you ask. There is a very easy answer. That's the only way that the Borghese (a gallery, not a museum by the way, and certainly not several as you indicate by Musei) lets holders of the pass enter. It is their entry and they set the rules.

You always (well nearly always) need a reservation, no matter how you are visiting that most fabulous of sculpture galleries. Visitors are only let in every 2 hours and they limit the number of people entering to about 200 each time. You enter as a group and have as much of the next 2 hours as you would like. You can leave any time, but if you are still there at the end of the 2 hours you will be asked to leave.

Get there at least 30 minutes prior to your reservation. If you don't you are likely to lose your tickets, and any money you have spent buying them.

The Roma Pass can save you some money if you use it the best way and move quickly.

We were there in December 2012, maybe not as busy a time as summer, but it was Christmastime and there were lots of visitors in town. We purchased our Roma Passes at a Tabacchi shop after we arrived, and then phoned the Borghese Gallery to make reservations for a few days later. Your timing might necessitate other methods.

The value of the Roma Pass for us (in addition to the excellent fold-out map that came with it), was free admission to our first 2 sights, line-cutting privileges at the Colosseum, discounted admission to other sights, and it also covered our many bus, metro, and tram rides.

Thanks for this information, hadn't thought about asking the hotel! Perfect.

I would make the Borghese reservation online and pay for it. You may be able to buy the Roma Pass at your hotel. Use the Roma Pass for the Colloseum and one other attraction. I don't try and justify buying the pass based on cost but the advantage of skipping the ticket line at major attractions. After all the expense of getting there your time is more valuable than any cost savings of visiting sites at a bargain or break even point. As long as you have the pass, study and use the bus system to save your feet and it'll help justify the cost of the pass if it makes you feel better.