Skip the Line

International tourism is booming, has been for a while now, and the number of people in many (most) popular destinations is exploding. I would expect significant crowds at anyplace that's well known -- and that includes almost anything famous in Rome, which is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.

I am constantly surprised (and a bit depressed) to read about long lines, and apparent requirements to book a ticket long in advance, at so many places that I once visited just by showing up and paying for a ticket, maybe waiting in a short line, then simply walking in. The idea that one now needs to make a reservation months in advance at so many places makes me sad. But the world has changed a lot in the 15 years since you were last in Rome. There are countries where in previous generations international travel was seen as a great luxury only reserved for a tiny elite; those countries now have huge middle classes, international flights now are dirt cheap, and just like Americans and Canadians and Australians, they want to go to Cinque Terre, get a selfie with the Mona Lisa, pose with a finger holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc.

If you have not been to Italy for 15 years, I suggest you calibrate your expectations and plan for most places to be surprisingly crowded. Worst case, you show up and the crowds are thin. But I think you will find yourself sharing these places with a LOT more people than you expect to.

Just remember that 15 years ago, there weren't tens of millions of Chinese people that were able to travel like they can now. If you want to do the typical tourist sites in the large European tourist cities, except huge crowds and lines (even off season).

There was a 19-year gap in my European travels (1996 to 2015). The world has indeed changed. It started with the budget airlines that now make it totally reasonable for someone from Ireland to spend a weekend in Prague. Or vice versa. Then there's the explosion of the Asian and Russian middle classes.

What has worked for me is including a lot of secondary cities (Padua, Vicenza, Viterbo, etc.) as well as secondary sights (e.g., the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome) in my itineraries. That assures that I am not spending 100% of my time as part of a tourist mob. I also ask myself whether I really care enough about a big-name sight to want to deal with the crowds, and I end up skipping a lot of the most popular places as a result. It helps quite a bit if you don't care much for aerial views of cities, because a lot of people want to climb everything.

We were last there 15 years ago in March and there weren't crowds so
we just bought regular tickets for the Vatican as well as the
Coliseum.

While true about the increase in crowds, the two attractions you list - Colosseum and Vatican Museums - are really the only two* which one should get advance tickets for, even in November. However, it sounds as if you've already visited both in the past: is it necessary to see them again or would you be interested in others which you haven't yet seen?

(asterisk above) There is a third, Galleria Borghese, which requires advance reservations to visit. It's a wonderful museum, and one we much preferred to the Vatican for its excellent crowd control.

I've also seen comments on this forum about pre-purchasing tickets for the Vatican Scavi Tour and the Domus Aurea. I have no personal experience with either.

You're right, acraven, that advance tickets are mandatory for the scavi, and are probably highly advised for Domus Aurea. I don't have personal experience with those either yet but here is the ticketing site for Domus Aurea:

https://www.coopculture.it/en/ticket.cfm?office=Progetto%20Domus%20Aurea&id=0&evento=268

For the Vatican scavi (should be ordered well in advance):

http://www.scavi.va/content/scavi/en/ufficio-scavi.html

Re size of crowds in Rome: when I visited in June 2017, the crowds were huge. For example, one could hardly get near the fountain in Piazza Navonna. When I returned to Rome in mid-Dec. 2017, the crowds were much more manageable . I found mid December crowds in Rome smaller than mid-December crowds in Paris.

Having said that, I would still recommend advance tickets for the Vatican and Colosseum in November....and advance tickets are required for the Borghese.

Advanced tickets aren't the same as skip the line tickets, are they?

Yes they are except that you only skip the ticket lines: no one can skip security-check queues.

Yes, advance tickets are required for the Domus Aurea, which is open only weekends and offers only rare English language tours.

I was in Rome for Thanksgiving 2016 and I would recommend buying tickets. Not only are there entrance lines, there are security lines . We had been to Rome before and spent several weeks there in 2006/7, so I knew what to expect. The crowds were even larger than I remembered. I am returning in mid-November for a couple of days (as part of another trip) and have purchased tickets to the Domus Aurea. If you want to visit the Borghese Gallery, you will need those tickets too. The fee for pre-purchasing is so small, get tickets for whatever you think you do not want to miss. I understand not wanting to be on a rigid schedule, but standing in lines for hours is no fun too.

One more thing to ponder: As the international tourist industry will probably continue to boom for the foreseeable future, the crowding you experience today will be viewed by future generations as "the good old days" when you only had 20,000 people every day trying to squeeze into Cinque Terre or Mont St Michel or Prague's Charles Bridge.

So don't put off that trip. Go now, while the crowds are comparitively thin, and you can still see the sights behind just a few hundred strangers taking selfies (because in a few years it'll probably be behind a few thousand!).

hi kellyandjasonp
lots of changes from 15 years ago. so many people traveling with cheap airfares from everywhere and all wanting to go to the most popular sites, especially rome florence venice. my first trip to rome, over 10 years ago, was so busy and crazy at the vatican. yes skip the line but security line was the problem, and that was mid october. things and times have changed, we thought october was good since summer over, and lots of tourists thot the same, summer is for families and the heat, november and december are holidays, more family getaways for a week, january february and march are cold months that some don't like, april and may are spring breaks and easter, a revolving door. supply and demand for accomodations, country issues with air bnb, vrbo, homeaway, etc. book flights and people think accomodation will be cheap like flight and they are not. some have restrictions as to how many people in room, it's city law and emergency/fire problems. it's not what you want but what the city authorizes. find a place outside of main city that people don't visit much and research and enjoy that area. as akitson seems to think, it's not only chinese that travel nowdays, "they" come from all over the world, and wanna see 7 places in 10 days. slow down and stay longer, enjoy what there is, as forum joe32F says not an amazing race or lets cross it off the bucket list. it's 6 of one and half dozen of another. yes it is a downer but that's travel life now.
aloha