Roma Pass

It seems you still need reservations with this Roma Pass.

Yes you do, and you need to read the fine print for which museums and how to do that. See 7.1 "For which museums it is necessary to make a reservation? How can I book?" on the FAQ section of the website:

https://www.romapass.it/en/FAQ/

The pass only covers FULL entry for one attraction if you buy the 48-hours pass, or 2 attractions with the 72-hour pass. As above, you may have to make advance, timed-entry reservations for them depending on which of those they are. It covers full entry to FAR fewer attractions than the Paris Museum Pass...and even that one is a shadow of its former self. The public transit piece of the Roma Pass was of no value at all to us as we walked everywhere, by choice, and it doesn't apply to transport to/from the airports.

It's up to you to do the math but I've personally never seen how this pass provides much of any value.

Thank you for your insights to the Roma Pass. It confirms my feelings about the pass, that we will need to do the math to see if it is worth it for us. We may not be using it as much as we had the Museum Pass in Paris. In Paris we walked to almost every sight so the metro may not be of value to us in Rome.

We’ve been to Rome 4 times and have never used ANY form of public transportation
Walked everywhere
Took a taxi for our early am Vatican tour

Thanks Christine -- we also walked almost exclusively in Paris. It was wonderful. We did take the Metro to Versailles because of the distance from downtown Paris. I think we are taking a pass on the pass in Rome.

Just piggybacking that Rome is exceedingly walkable. We stayed closed to Roma Termini and found ourselves 15-20min from everything. Borghese Galleria/Gardens doesn't even have a metro stop nearby. I think the only 2 times we used the metro were for the Vatican and St. Paul outside the Wall. We took the bus once to and from Trastevere, not that we couldn't have walked, but it was drizzling and the same day we walked 7 km inside Vatican Museums.

I found it much easier to buy tickets as we needed them. The tabbachi shops do sell out of metro/bus tickets, and I did have to go a little farther to buy ours when we went out to dinner. You cannot buy bus tickets on the bus (so they they said), but being so close to Repubblica metro stop, I just hopped down the stairs to the machines and back to the bus stop with tickets for our going and returning (as dinner took longer than 100 minutes). It felt worth the $6 round trip that day.

We stayed at a walk-up apartment overlooking the Campo de' Fiori piazza in February 2017, for 6 nights. One of the first things we did was to find a local tabacchi shop and buy a weekly Metro/bus pass, which I believe was 24 Euro at that time.

Determined to get our money's worth, yes, we did walk quite a bit, but each day we had a list of attractions to possibly see, and armed with a laminated street map of Rome and a bus schedule, we truly wandered. So, so much to see in Roma, we traveled to whatever place struck our fancy that day. Not trying to get lost, but if the Metra took us one stop too far, so what? And if the 'dogs' got tired, we'd stop for a gelato, and take the bus back towards the Campo.

We found that having that pass freed us up to see anything in Rome wherever & whenever we wanted, and in late February we kind of had the place to ourselves. Yes, we did get our money's worth, taking 19 bus or Metra trips over that time. And we'll do it the same way again next time!

A lot of people are commenting that have already been to Rome, which is great. But purchasing tickets for the Colosseum for summer 2023 has been a miserable experience. I purchased tickets in March 2020 and never had this kind of trouble. Unfortunately, we had to cancel due to Covid-19.

The Roma Pass seems to provide an opportunity to purchase tickets to the Colosseum, when other options are sold out. It may be worth purchasing for that reason alone.

Single public-transit tickets in Rome cost only 1.50 euros, which is a real bargain. I went to a lot of places quite far from my hotel in Monti (not as centrally located as the popular Pantheon area), but I still used only about 8 tickets over the course of 20 days. There's so much interesting stuff to see in Rome as you walk around. I guess I might have used transit more if it had been hot, though.

Two tips for buying transit tickets:

• Tabacchi will almost certainly require payment with cash, because the credit card fee would probably wipe out the small fee they get paid for selling the tickets.

• When buying multiple tickets from a vending machine, be careful about your selection. I was trying to buy five single tickets (planning to give some to a friend), but I ended up with a not-sharable stored-value card holding five rides. Not a big deal, but it would be a problem if someone traveling with a family intended to buy a whole bunch of individual tickets and didn't get them.

Hi @bhubbardii,

Could you elaborate on why purchasing for summer 2023 has been a miserable experience? We're looking at August and I don't think it's open to purchase yet, but curious what your experience has been so we're prepared.

Thank you,
Ruth

Certainly. I am going to be in Rome 21 June - 25 June. I would like to attend the colosseum at the earliest possible time. We have been instructed (on this forum and on the CoopCulture website) to purchase our tickets 30 days in advance. I have been setting alarms to randomly wake up to make ticket purchases on the weekend, just to test the 30 day ticket purchase thing out. There aren't any tickets available when I do this.

I am assuming if I can't get tickets now for May, things won't be any better in June. I had to cancel a March 2020 trip to Rome. I was able to purchase tickets without any problem.

Personally, I like using the Roma Pass and found it to be a good value. It just depends on the sites you are interested in and if you care to use public transportation. I always found the Metro and busses to be an attraction unto itself, where I can experience Rome from another perspective. Rome old center is very walkable but, if you want to venture out to Ostia Antica or even Testaccio, the Metro/bus comes in handy. Everyone is different and Rome can be enjoyed from a million different perspectives. Have fun!