Tour of just the Forum/Palatine Hill (no Colosseum)

Commila, just checking that by "planning to take the official underground tour" you understand that you need to buy those tickets online as soon as possible? The tour offered on the Coopculture website is VERY popular and sells out very quickly: do not wait until you get to Rome and hope to be able to do this.

http://www.coopculture.it/en/events.cfm?id=6

You will also be required to purchase a € 12,00 regular-entry combo ticket for the Colosseum/Palatine/Forum. This is done when you take the voucher for your tour to the reservation desk. See this recent thread for info on that:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/confusion-about-buying-separate-online-tickets-to-colosseum-palatine-etc

The 5-euro, 1-hour guided tour of the Palatine/Forum is available for limited hours only on Saturdays and Sundays, and you can find information on that on the 'official' website (under Educational Activities/Guided tours for individuals ):

http://www.060608.it/en/cultura-e-svago/beni-culturali/beni-archeologici/area-archeologica-foro-romano-palatino.html

In addition to the tour price, you'll use the same regular-entry ticket you purchased at the Colosseum for entry to these two sites. Or, if you did the Palatine/Forum first, use that entry ticket for the Colosseum.

This is the only inexpensive guided tour offered for the Palatine/Forum although audioguides are also available.

I just bought tickets last week for the underground tour in September. Not a lot of choices were left.

You need to purchase regular entry for the Colosseum/forum/palatine hill. It's a combo ticket, and there's no way to separate them out. This ticket did not have a specific date or time. The underground/3rd ring tour DOES have a specific date/time.

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The regular Colosseum ticket is described as a "two day ticket." I'm hoping somebody on here can describe what that means. Do we have in/out privileges? Can we do the Colosseum on one day, and the Forum/Palatine Hill on the second day? How does that work.

You can use a private guide and have them tailor your tour. Try [email protected] - Sonia Tavoletta is a very good guide for the area.

The regular Colosseum ticket is described as a "two day ticket." I'm
hoping somebody on here can describe what that means. Do we have
in/out privileges? Can we do the Colosseum on one day, and the
Forum/Palatine Hill on the second day? How does that work.

Stephen, by "two day ticket", it means that you are indeed allowed to visit the Colosseum on one day, and the Forum/Palatine on the following day - or vice versa - if you don't have time to do all three on the same day. No, it doesn't allow for in/out privileges: it's one visit for the Colosseum, and one COMBINED visit to the Palatine/Forum per ticket, and once inside either, you can't leave and re-enter on that ticket. And you can't split the Forum and Palatine between the two days.

It is sort of explained on the website I'd included above:

http://www.060608.it/en/cultura-e-svago/beni-culturali/beni-archeologici/area-archeologica-foro-romano-palatino.html

"PLEASE NOTE: the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill are located in the same archaeological area and count as one admission, therefore if you use the ticket or Roma Pass to get in once, it cannot be used again for the same site/area"

Does this make sense?

Ok thanks for that.

I'm assuming they have some method of determining which site you have/have not visited?

The ticket will be punched, stamped, scanned, or the appropriate portion of it will be removed when you visit the site, so it's clear what you have already visited.

Yes, they have a way to tell. If I remember correctly, they scan a bar code that's printed on the ticket, and I believe the date purchased is printed on it as well.

Thanks everyone. Yes, there are only a few tickets left for the underground tour, so I plan to buy today. I know that there is no way to separate out the admission of the three sites, and we do plan to visit all three. I'm just hoping to find a way to take a separate tour of the Forum/Palatine hill area, as the Colosseum underground tour does not include this. It seems that all I can do is book the non-official Colosseum underground tour with a third party company that does all three sites in one tour. Am I out of luck for a Forum tour (aside from hiring an expensive private guide) if I book the official Colosseum underground tour? Just surprised that there aren't more options out there for people that just want a tour of the Forum. It seems like the underground tour is very popular, so I'm surprised there aren't more Forum-only tours for visitors to take after they've taken the official Colosseum underground tour.

Other than the limited 5-euro weekend option, hiring a private tour company is your only option for a guided Forum tour. To be honest, the Colosseum is the thing the vast amount of tourists come to see, with the Forum a distant second, and Palatine even more distant third. I'm pretty sure a chunk of them just take a wander through one or the other simply because the ticket includes them, and others skip them entirely. It doesn't mean the sites are not busy - they are - but the interest level for many tends to be on a different scale.

Let's just say there's a reason why the advice for tourists who turn up without pre-purchased Colosseum tickets is to go to the Palatine or Forum ticket kiosks - where queues are shorter - versus standing in the other long, long line, whether they wish to see the Palatine or Forum or not.

I personally think these two are more complex - because they involve so many individual structures with different purposes - and so warrant the services of a good guide if wanting that deep dive into their history. A 5-euro, 1- hour tour which includes both would, I'm guessing, provide only the barest of facts.

Thanks for all of your helpful tips, Kathy, and for the link showing how to sign up for the 5 euro tour of the Forum. Wish there was some middle ground to be had...there was a 50+ euro per person difference in buying just the combined ticket with the official Colosseum underground tour vs. the best price I could find booking through a tour company to tour all three sites. So our choice seems to be paying 100+ more euros for the two of us to get a group tour of the Forum from a well-rated tour company or pay 10 euro more to get what may or may not be a good tour from the forum office. I'm surprised how few options are out there!

On TripAdvisor, a few people mentioned being able to join tour groups at the Forum upon arrival for 15-20 euro. It sound like they may not be official tours. I sent messages to the posters, and they seemed to have been happy with their experiences, but it seems to be that it would be easy to get scammed this way. Does anybody have experience with this?

How about Rick's ebooks for both of these sites? If you have a reader, they may be an option:

http://www.amazon.com/Rick-Steves-Tour-Palatine-Hill-ebook/dp/B0079M518S

(they show the separate book for the forum on the same page)

Thanks Kathy! Won't have an e-reader, just an iPhone, but it looks like it may be compatible with smartphones. Are Rick Steves tour e-books text only (like a chapter out of his guidebook), or are they guides that you can use to guide you on the spot with maps/pictures/etc as you walk through the Forum?

Was planning to use the RS audioguide as our backup option, along with a good map and perhaps the book you can buy that shows "then and now" photos. Looks like online, people say it can be hard to navigate on your own this way, though.

Thanks again, you have been very helpful on a topic which I can't seem to figure out on my own!

I was able to find more info on the e-books, in case it is helpful to anyone...the person from the Rick Steves store said: "It would certainly not be ideal to read it on an iPhone but it wouldn’t be too bad that I would go out and buy a Kindle or e-reader for it. The walks are straight out of the guidebooks so if you already have the physical guidebook I would just use that instead. There would not be any accompanying photos on the e-books."

There is no official tour of the forum being offered this summer. They stopped that last month when the crowds and the heat picked up. You will need to book a private tour of this area if you wish to tour it.

The entry ticket is valid for two consecutive days, not just two days. The entries must be on the same or consecutive days as the ticket will not be valid after that.

There are lots of audio guides of the forum that you can download to a smart phone. You can then tour the forum at your own pace.

Donna

There is no official tour of the forum being offered this summer. They
stopped that last month when the crowds and the heat picked up.

Interesting. I wonder why they haven't changed that information on the http://www.060608.it site as that one is a reasonably 'official' reference. Oh well!

I just scanned quickly the other responses so not sure if anyone mentioned this, but when we were in Rome last year, I just used the Rick Steves Audio Europe app on my iPod (and I'm sure for iPhone) and listened to his walking tour of the Forum (doesn't cover Palatine Hill tho)...there are lots of other great walking tours on there as well...and it's free!

Bummer, Donna, I was hoping to call them and book the official tour. That's too bad that they stopped. Maybe I will call too see when they start again. I appreciate you letting me know so that I didn't have my heart set on the official tour. It sounds like my only other option for a tour on a budget would be to hire one of the people that I've heard congregate outside the ticket office to offer tours, but I'm a little leery about this. I've seen on some reviews that people really liked their experiencing doing it this way, but it seems like you could also end up with a guide who isn't even necessarily giving you accurate info and just wants to make a buck.

Nicole, yes, I just downloaded the audioguides yesterday - such a great resource! Especially with the maps that RS has available. What did you think of the audioguide at the Forum specifically? From what I've read, the Forum needs a guide more than most places in order to interpret what you're seeing, otherwise it will just look like "a pile of rocks". I saw that some people said the RS guide of the forum was confusing, but perhaps others find it perfectly adequate. If I don't have any other options, I was considering using that plus one of those "then and now" books that show how it used to look vs. how it looks now.

Thanks to everyone who has replied, this has helped me make sense of the situation in the absence of other solid info available online.

commila, you really don't need to take a guided tour. Most audio guides are fine, especially if you combine them with a good guide book. They will give you all the information about the different ruins in the forum but will let you go at your own pace.

Yeah, it is a bummer about the forum tours. They stopped doing them in the beginning of June. They were actually very good and very cheap. Hopefully, they will resume them in November when the crowds die down and the temp isn't so hot.

Donna

It actually was quite informative...we got a bit lost trying to follow the directions (you wouldn't think it would be hard to know right from left...lol), but we could just pause til we got our bearings or wanted to move on. Unfortunately, there were three of us, so I had my iPod on speaker and it was a little hard to hear. I actually had someone stop me and ask me where I had got the walking tour/info. (So I plugged the RS app).

When we did Florence, we used the audio guide at the Accademia and used it in Venice at St Marks...loved that it made you stop and look at things closely and notice things you would have missed. You can always listen to the guide beforehand and see if it will do the trick for you.

FWIW, when we went to Rome in 2008, we did a Colosseum tour with one of the random tour guides that was in the area (we had just gotten our Roma Pass, and this tour did skip the line). That was before the underground/3rd tier was open. We had an Italian guide for the Colosseum, then had a Canadian (of all things) guide at Palatine Hill (but he didn't do the Forum ruins, we just wandered them).

When we returned last year, I didn't prebook the underground tour. This was the 2nd week of Sept. We were staying a stone's throw from the Colosseum for 5 nights (you could see it out the window!) and went over first thing on our 2nd morning to see if they had any openings (for that day or later in the week)...we got a slot at 1pm that day for the underground tour . I was OK with not doing it if no slots were available. So they either had cancellations or maybe just have a certain number of openings per day. It wasn't off season. But if you can book and your heart is set on it, then book ahead.