Tickets for the Colosseum in Rome

If you are trying for Underground or Attic tickets, you could try a combination of both. When you are 30 days out, you could try for tickets through the Colosseum website (remember to take into account the time difference), and if that doesn't work, book a tour through a third party supplier.

As has been discussed often on this forum, these tour operators sometimes cancel or alter an Underground tour at the last minute, usually because they oversold it. When this happens, they might try to reschedule you, or offer a different tour (an Arena only experience, instead of both Underground and Arena, for example). If they have nothing to offer, or you are not interested in alternatives, they should give you a refund. This is just something to be aware of if you go the third party route.

Have a wonderful time!

Rather than staying up most of the night fighting with the website to by Colosseum tickets online, we paid up and bought an Audioguide Tour through GetYourGuide. The actual provider was c.i.s. Tours. The “tour” was just entry tickets and a link to download an audio guide app that we didn’t use. But the c.i.s. representative was right where we were supposed to meet him, 15 minutes earlier than we were supposed to be there, had paper tickets printed out for us, and we strolled in at the reserved time with just a few minutes of security check. It turned out to be well worth the extra expense to avoid being up all night! We didn’t plan to visit any of the special areas or ones that require a guided tour, though.

I just got tickets for the attic next month. I live on the west coast so we are eight hours different here.
Prior to the day I would look at the ticket site and get familiar with the different tours and ticket options. I knew we wanted the underground or attic tickets. I found in my research the underground are much more difficult to obtain then the attic tickets.
Thirty days or January 31st for tickets on March 1st. 28 days in February can mess you up on the thirty day cycle.
I got online with both my phone and computer trying to refresh between the underground and attic tours trying to get either one. I was surprised how the slot for the first tours were gone right away. But they only release them exactly thirty days so the 8:30 am slot opens at 12:30 am my time.
So I kept refreshing trying to get the next opening. Unknown to me if you do that too much the system will kick you out thinking your a robot. So I thought I was screwed by getting kicked out.
After about twenty minutes later I got back in and got two tickets to the attic for 10:10 am time entry. So I grabbed them while I could not wanting to search further for fear of getting kicked out.
I wouldn't mind not having to stay up at night to purchase tickets but I don't want to risk going through a tour company and it being canceled. Not to say the cost difference.
I also never saw any openings for the underground tour other than the Italian led tour. I think the attic tour will be fine.
These tickets were easy compared to the Tower of London Ceremony of the Keys.

Thanks for everyone’s reply. So helpful. FYI, if I read correctly from the colosseum website, there are no underground or attic tours while we are there (at their end not that there are no tix). So it would be the basic or adding the arena. We are not going at busy time of year so we will attempt the direct route and then try the third party route

Our visit was in the peak of the summer; I purchased my Colosseum tickets at the entrance right from the "park." There was a short line, and then we walked 20 feet over to the entrance. Set up is similar to Disney. Really easy to navigate. Good luck and have fun!

kstyspeck, what year was your visit?