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Vatican Museums and Colosseum

Hi all - wife and I are planning three weeks in Italy this July with a lot of deeper cuts, but one stop is Rome and we're planning to see the two biggest tourist attractions. Two questions:
1) What happened to the evening tours of the Colosseum? I looked here around a month ago and saw there were small tours at night, which looked like a great option (we'd avoid standing in huge crowds in the baking sun). Are they no longer an option?
2) (big long shot here, but…) is there any circumstance in which visitors could get a relatively private look at the Vatican Museums? We went to the Louvre in July a couple years ago, and the experience was just really disappointing because there was a sea of too many other visitors that ended up taking a lot of our attention away from the art. Something like an early access (maybe as part of a tour?) would be phenomenal. As I said, a long shot, but figured I'd ask just in case.

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Posted by
28912 posts

This article is a year old, and things may have changed, but you may find something here:

https://www.romeactually.com/best-vatican-private-tours/

I believe someone mentioned a private-access tour of the Vatican Museums on the forum not too long ago. The cost seemed astronomical to me, but I don't remember any details, so I can't provide a key word to use in the Search box here.

Posted by
16984 posts

2) (big long shot here, but…) is there any circumstance in which
visitors could get a relatively private look at the Vatican Museums?

As said above, tours which access the museums before the general public are few and far between anymore, and are very expensive. I've linked a few of those in my last post in this thread:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/vatican-museum-guides

As far as night tours of the Colosseum, those have been seasonal and I'm sure they haven't opened booking for them yet for late spring to fall 2025. Last year they only booked them 7 days in advance, and only offered them on Thursday nights so tickets were very limited. It remains to be seen if that's the case this year. What I would NOT do is book with a 3rd party offering a night tour. Last I looked, I didn't see any company outside of the official website currently offering a true after-dark tour. Some of the 3rd-party sites use fancy language, such as "twilight tour" or "evening tour" but the details revealed that they occur before 7:00 PM, during regular public hours, and some as early as 4:00 or so.

Posted by
16984 posts

This was posted last year on the "Wanted in Rome" site about night tours:

https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/how-to-visit-romes-colosseum-underground-by-night.html

I'd forgotten that they'd started them so late in the season in 2024 but figure that may have been because of the change in the official ticketing provider (it used to be coopculture) in the spring of last year + new park website. Between that and the Vatican, there were LOTS of changes last year!!!