Underground coliseum tours

I think that if they cancel your tour, they will have to give you a refund no matter what. What company is your reservation with?

I am not concerned so much about losing money, I am concerned about not seeing the Colosseum. I am taking my sister on her only trip to Italy and that is her number one experience to see.

mlbmichigan:

I have heard about this recently too. I have a VIP Colosseum Underground Tour with Roman Forum & Palatine Hill booked with Walks of Italy for October 3rd for 4 people. The underground area is something that 2 of our group are really interested in seeing. I can cancel for free within 24 hours of the tour. I've been thinking of trying to purchase the underground tickets myself thru the official Colosseum site & canceling this tour. If I wait until we are notified by Walks of Italy that our tour has been cancelled or changed, it will most likely be too late to attempt to purchase tickets thru the official site. Good Luck!

I don’t want them to cancel it or switch it at the last minute to one
that doesn’t include the underground because they no longer are
allowed to provide them.

I've not heard that's the case, only that tickets to the underground are so difficult to land that even tour companies can't always get their hands on them; they sell them in advance hoping they can land them. I have heard that some tours do have to hand their customers over to a Coopculture guide for some/all of the internal parts but don't know if that's ALL of them, ALL the time. It's also not a "new" thing.

My personal take on the underground is that it's just not a big enough deal for the amount of stress that people go to either get tickets that include it in the first place, or to feel like they're hugely missing out if that part of their tour doesn't happen. You can see down into a large large part not covered by the arena floor (I've been twice, and before the underground was even open to visitors.) Because space is limited, tours also do not spend much time down there.

So if you're concerned about not seeing ANY of the interior because your tour might cancel, option #2 is to get to the new Coopculture on-site ticket office early in the morning, before it opens, and buy entry tickets there. They do not sell tours that include the underground, and I'm hearing that your entry slot may be immediate, so you're not buying tickets for one day in advance of the next, and there is a limit on the amount of them they can sell each day, thus the need to get there early. Another recommendation I'm seeing is to book any tour at all that does NOT include the underground.

This is the link to the info for the on-site ticket office; the website is only active during the hours (Rome time) the Colosseum/Palatine/Forum are open so won't work otherwise.

https://colosseo.it/en/2023/05/ticket-office-opening-colosseum-square/

I'll be in Rome in a couple of weeks and I got up at 3 am EST 30 days in advance to try and get tickets to the Arena and Underground via the Coopculture (official) site. There was almost immediately no tickets available. I kept trying til 4 am when I gave up.... As a backup booked a cancellable tour that said Arena and Underground too via third party. Then later in the day decided to check again on Coopculture site and 4 tickets became available and I grabbed 2, so likely someone's credit card got denied or something like that. My point is, keep trying on the site, and perhaps something will pop up even if it at first it seems like its sold out. If you have more than one potential day to do this you can try on multiple days, though obviously decide how much of your time you want to spend with no guarantees of success. FWIW, I also did note more frequently there was 1 single ticket coming up as available for a given time. Didn't work for me but if its only 1 person that wants to go, that may be a bit easier to come by. This was also for mid-July when presumably crowds would be at a peak, so maybe easier in the fall.

IMO people get way too focused on the underground portion of what is a fabulous archeological site. Just take a tour, any tour, and you'll be able to look down into the underground from several vantage points. The above-ground part is amazing. Drink it all in.

Not seeing the Underground does not mean that you won't be seeing the Colosseum. I had my underground tour cancelled by walks of Italy at the last moment last Sept. It hasn't gotten any better. I went on a regular tour of the colosseum instead and I found that it was just fine. I enjoyed it, learned a lot, and really didn't have any burning regrets about the Underground.

Thanks everyone, you have reassured me!!

I have the VIP underground tour booked with Walks in September, but am going to try and get my own tickets 30 days out based on the frequency of cancellations. After reading these comments and others, I'm not so hung up on getting the underground. But, I'm wondering if people still think the arena floor is worth the effort. I noticed Context tours doesn't even offer an underground or arena tour and I know they are a highly reputable tour company. And if I'm looking at the website correctly, it appears there is no didactic tour with the arena tickets -- only underground and general.