ROME · ITALY
Emperors, popes and the art they left behind.
The Colosseum and the Forum, the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, the Borghese marbles and the catacombs beneath the streets. Skip-the-line tickets, small-group guides and a seat at the Roman table, all reviewed in one place.
Only here
Three things only Rome can show you.
Skip-the-line tickets and audio guides exist in every city. The arena floor of the Colosseum, Michelangelo’s ceiling and the catacombs under the Appian Way belong to this one.
Two thousand years on
The Arena Floor
The largest amphitheatre ever built still stands at the head of the Forum. Eighty thousand Romans once packed it for the games; today you can walk out onto the reconstructed arena floor where the gladiators entered, and look down into the hypogeum, the tunnel maze that lifted men and beasts up to the sand.
- 1 Rome: Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Guided Tour
- 2 Rome: Colosseum & Forum with Audio Guide App -Optional Arena
- 3 Rome: Colosseum, Forum & Palatine Hill Tour & Optional Arena
Four years on the scaffold
The Sistine Ceiling
Michelangelo spent four years on his back painting the nine scenes of Genesis across the Sistine vault. You reach it only at the end of a square kilometre of Vatican corridors, the Raphael Rooms and the Gallery of Maps, which is exactly why arriving under that ceiling feels the way it does.
- 1 Rome: Vatican, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica Tour
- 2 Rome: Pasta & Tiramisu Class with Fine Wine by the Vatican
- 3 Rome: Vatican Pass, Top Attractions and Free Transport
A level down
The City Beneath
Rome buried its dead in tunnels cut for hundreds of kilometres beneath the Appian Way, and stacked its churches on the temples below them. The catacombs, the bone-lined Capuchin crypt and the buried Mithras temple under San Clemente are a second Rome, the one most visitors never reach.
- 1 Rome: Crypts and Catacombs Underground Tour with Transfers
- 2 Rome: Catacombs and Capuchin Crypt Guided Tour with Transfer
- 3 Rome: Appian Way, Catacombs, & Roman Aqueducts E-bike Tour
Start with the one everyone books
The morning the whole trip is built around.
More travellers plan a Roman trip around this than anything else: the Colosseum, the Forum and Palatine Hill, in a single guided walk.
The classics
Rome’s Most Popular Tours
The Colosseum, the Vatican, the catacombs and the kitchens of Trastevere. The mornings most travellers come to Rome for.
Where to begin
The Rome a first trip is built around.
The Colosseum, the Vatican, the Borghese, the catacombs, the cooking classes and the day south to Pompeii. The handful of experiences most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big ticket
How to do the Colosseum.
There are several ways through the same gate, and the ticket you buy decides how much of it you see. Three routes into the arena, by how far below the sand you want to go.
Subterranean Rome
Go down a level.
Under the basilicas and the Appian Way, Rome keeps a second city: Christian catacombs cut for kilometres through soft tufa, the bone-tiled crypt of the Capuchin friars, the buried temple of Mithras three churches deep beneath San Clemente. Cooler, quieter, and older than almost everything above it.
Read the guide: the catacombs and crypts of Rome →Cucina romana
Learn the four-ingredient classics.
Roman food is the city’s other museum: cacio e pepe, carbonara, amatriciana and gricia, four pastas built from barely a handful of things done exactly right. Spend a morning in a Trastevere kitchen rolling pasta, or follow a guide through the markets and the fryers of the old Jewish Ghetto.
See the cooking classes & food tours →After the gates close
Rome is best after dark.
When the day-trippers leave, the floodlights come up on the Colosseum, the Trevi fountain finally empties, and the piazzas turn into the city’s living room. See it by vintage Vespa, on a night walk between the fountains, or with after-hours tickets to a Colosseum lit from within.
Evening experiences in Rome →Beyond the walls
The day trips worth leaving Rome for.
Rome sits inside an easy ring of escapes: the streets of Pompeii frozen under Vesuvius, the cliff towns of the Amalfi Coast, Saint Francis’s Assisi and the cathedral hill of Orvieto, and the port-city ruins of Ostia Antica a half-hour from the centre.
- 1 From Rome: Pompeii, Amalfi Coast, and Sorrento Day Trip
- 2 From Rome: Pompeii, Amalfi Coast and Positano Day Trip
- 3 From Rome: Pompeii Day Trip with Optional Vesuvius and Lunch
By landmark
Six corners of the Eternal City.
Ancient Rome for the Colosseum and the Forum. The Vatican for the art. The Borghese for the marble. The piazzas for the fountains. The catacombs for the city below. Castel Sant’Angelo for the river.
By experience
Pick how to see it.
A guide for the history, skip-the-line for the queues, a kitchen for the cooking, two wheels for the cobbles, or the floodlit city after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days in Rome.
First time in the city? A long weekend that covers the ancient core, the Vatican art and the streets in between, without a wasted hour.
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