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Ticket Confusion for Colsseum and Vatican

Posted by (Texas) on

Hello everyone!

I am planning a trip to Rome for the first week of November and am getting frustrated trying to figure out official tickets versus third-party tours for both the Colosseum and the Vatican.

On reseller sites like Viator, Get Your Guide, and even the actual tour operators, I constantly see listings titled "Colosseum & Arena Floor" showing a teaser price of $50–$60. But when you click in and select dates/options, the base option says "NO Arena Floor," and after adding the option with arena floor the price shoots up to $200+ for two of us! Meanwhile, official Full Experience tickets are only €24 (or $32 with the educational tour) on the official site. It feels like a massive bait-and-switch on these sites. It's like the webpages are made by the pickpockets. Arena floor is very important to me since its my third trip and I've always missed the arena floor tickets.

I’d love clarity on two main issues before I buy:

Colosseum "Full Experience" / Arena Floor Tickets: I’ve been checking ticketing.colosseo.it daily. When looking 30 days out, I rarely see Arena tickets, but I do catch slots popping up 7 days out. (Is the release window for Arena/Full Experience tickets actually 7 days prior instead of 30 days?)

My Question: Given the misleading third-party tour listings and markup, is our best bet for early November to hold out for official tickets when they release, or do we need to bite the bullet on a third-party guided tour to guarantee Arena Floor access?

Vatican Museums & St. Peter's Basilica: On the official Vatican Museums portal, basic entry tickets are €20 (plus booking fee). Third-party tours advertising guided access to the Museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica cost $100–$150+.

My Question: Do we have to pay for an expensive third-party tour just to use the group passageway/shortcut from the Sistine Chapel directly into St. Peter’s Basilica? Is there an official Vatican guided tour on their website that grants access to this shortcut, or if we buy the €20 entry, are we required to exit the museums, walk around the outside walls, and go back through security at St. Peter's Square? I don't see an offering for what I am looking for which would be Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica.

Thanks for helping me navigate these booking systems!

Posted by
9070 posts

The Sistine Chapel shortcut back door is for anybody accompanied by a guide. The Vatican Museums does offer its own tours with expert guides, although I’ve never used their insider tours.

Back in 2012, before they got so strict about requiring guides for every tourist, we were able to slip through that secret door, using advice from Rick Steves’ guidebook. The last visit, in the past five years, we’d hired a private guide - expensive, but we had a particular focus that trip, and anything to avoid backtracking all the way to the entrance of the museum, then walking back around to the separate security line for St. Peter’s, that you don’t have to do if you go through that guided-customers-only door.

Posted by
18390 posts

Cyn, I don't know as ALL tour companies can access the shortcut from Sistine to basilica. Unless things have changed - and it's possible they have - only tour companies who specifically note that benefit in their tour info take advantage of it (and never on Wed. mornings). Happy to be wrong about that if someone knows differently!

Posted by
9070 posts

Kate, it appeared that the guy monitoring the door this last time was just looking for someone with an acceptable Guide badge accompanying visitors. Some had a client or two, others were herding a group of a dozen or more. We were waiting for our guide, who left us to observe and contemplate the Sistine Chapel on our our for a while, to make it through the throng of other people to join us again at the back, near the door. I observed at least a couple of people approach the door who were immediately turned away. As he found us, the door got opened, we two went through first, but the monitor double checked our guide, who held up the badge on his lanyard. Maybe there are only particular badges honored, and some fake “Guide” badge might get spotted and rejected right away, but there seemed to be a variety of guides, with a variety of clients, and none were heavily scrutinized, as far as I could tell. Have a Guide? You’re Good to Go.

Perhaps there are official Vatican Guide credentials, requiring a rigorous qualification process. Maybe there’s some secret hand gesture that confirms who’s legit and who’s not! :-)

Posted by
27 posts

The walk back around the St. Peter's is 15 minutes? That's just a drop in the bucket for all the walking to be done in Rome so maybe just the Vatican musem tickets are good enough. What is a reasonable price to pay for a guided tour in a group for the Vatican?

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