Rome: Entry fee coming for the Pantheon

This has been a point of contention between Rome and the Vatican for some time. Traditionally, the Catholic Church has not charged any admission fee to a church. There have been some countries that have broke from this (Spain comes to mind), but any church in Italy has allowed free entry to the main chapel (Including St. Peters).

I suppose with the Pantheon, making a few bucks off the tourists is fine. It is a functioning church, but few see it that way. I do miss the days when on a wander through the area, I could just stroll in, admire the dome, and wander out within 10 minutes or so, those days are gone.

There was utter mayhem and chaos with a timed & paid entry to the Pantheon on May 1–yes, a holiday —with no signage or direction, at least 3 long lines in different directions with people inserting themselves at random, pushing, shoving and unpleasantries uttered in many languages…I was exhausted and annoyed by the time I got in. I arrived 80 minutes before I was scheduled to enter and get an audio guide, which they didn’t have available, so I said just let me in, I really didn’t care at that point. I have no problem paying for entry to something as awe-inspiring as the Pantheon but they need to manage it much better.

Thank you so much for posting this! We're supposed to be there 7/5. Thanks for making us all aware!

...but any church in Italy has allowed free entry to the main chapel
(Including St. Peters).

Hmmm. We've found that to be the case for mass/services but not always for tourism purposes? In Florence, Santa Croce, San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella come to mind; all have visitor fees that include the main body, and all are still active Catholic churches.

Christa, it's going to be interesting to see how they plan to avoid the chaos you experienced!

Kathy--occasionally an employee would walk the line telling people that if they didn't already have a ticket they should go home :( A few stanchions along the way to indicate the presence of an "official" line would have helped, perhaps a person or two to shoo wayward folks accidentally trying to start new lines into the established one.

We paid to see the Duomo's in both Orvieto and Sienna on our trip last fall. You could enter the one in Orvieto from the side and go into a small side chapel, but you would have missed much of the church.

We just back from Italy - Rome was of course full of tourists (we being amongst them) We attended the Pantheon on May 18th and yes there was a line of sorts but it did move quickly- no admission was charged and once inside my husband and I took the opportunity to sit in one of the pews and took our time looking at the inside of this awesome building. I did not observe that they were setting up any form of ticket booth on the exterior. However, they did have a glass enclosure office just inside the massive front doors. I don't foresee any ticket entry by July 1st. I would be surprised.

Shelley, you were there before this entry fee was predicted to be enacted. Let's see what transpires in the next few weeks?