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COLOSSEUM † MACHINERY OF DEATH
- Colosseum backstage and basement
- Evening › Daily › 2h
- Traveller (18+): €149 (-18 years pay less)
- Visit Colosseum † Machinery of Death
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CLASSIC COLOSSEUM GREEN
- Colosseum entrance and Guinness guide
- From 10am › Daily › 6h
- Traveller (18+): €59 (-18 years pay less)
- Visit Classic Colosseum Green
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COLOSSEUM † COMBAT LEVEL VIEW
- Colosseum entrance and arena floor
- From 10am › Daily › 2h
- Traveller (18+): €79 (-18 years pay less)
- Visit Colosseum † Combat Level View
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COLOSSEUM CORE & TOMB TUNNELS
- Colosseum entrance and catacombs
- From 10am › Daily › 5h
- Traveller (18+): €89 (-18 years pay less)
- Visit Colosseum Core & Tomb Tunnels
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MACABRE ROME † TOUR IN PEACE
- Not your typical dark Rome tour
- From 10am › Daily › 5h
- Traveller (18+): €99 (-18 years pay less)
- Visit Macabre Rome † Tour in Peace
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COLOSSEUM CORE & COLOUR CAVES
- Colosseum entrance and ancient abodes
- From 10am › Daily › 4h
- Traveller (18+): €79 (-18 years pay less)
- Visit Colosseum Core & Colour Caves
COLOSSEUM TOURS
As you may have read on our tours of the Vatican page, Colosseum tickets have become much sought after, indeed, some say they are a rare commodity. Is this true? Well, there is no doubt that things are not as they used to be, when it was possible to book blocks of tickets on the morning of any travel date.
"Coopculture", as authorized vendor of Colosseum tickets and events for many years, was notified of contract termination in late 2023. Rome tour operators breathed a collective sigh of relief after years of resignation. Why?
An investigation led by the Italian Competition Authority and Guardia di Finanza (tax police) revealed serious malpractice by several Coopculture managers, led by Letizia Casuccio.
Coopculture gave carte blanche to the wealthy OTAs (Online Travel Agencies). Without any surprises whatsoever, the culprits were Viator (Tripadvisor), Tiqets, GetYourGuide and Musement. These OTAs purchased Colosseum tickets in bulk using bots, BEFORE Coopculture offered any to the public on their (impossible to navigate) website.
It is believed that Coopculture instructed their own web developers to make navigation to Colosseum tickets as difficult as possible. They succeeded very well indeed.
The result? OTAs marked up Colosseum ticket prices and made obscene amounts of money. Availability on the Coopculture website was catatonic - only a handful of travellers made it to the checkout page. In most cases, they booked between 2 and 4 tickets per session. From 2019, if not earlier, less than 100 tickets was the average daily availability, even less in high season, of an allocation that should have approximated to 3,000.
Famously, Coopculture made it impossible to book more than one ticket for the Colosseum underground between April and August in 2023, and even then it was one ticket every couple of days, not every hour. In all of 2023, approximately 500,000 travellers visited the Coopculture website in search of Colosseum tickets.
We're just glad that the Coopculture Colosseum scam is over. Unfortunately, they are still trading, selling tickets on behalf of other, lesser venues in Italy.
Four of our shared Rome tours enter the Colosseum without going down to the underground. The one that does, Machinery of Death, can be booked right now. The arena floor (through "Gladiator Gate") is an excellent way to experience an ancient Roman POV that hasn't changed at all since gladiators took centre stage. Views of the upper tiers may bring about a degree of dizziness!
Travellers must wonder what became of the popular Belvedere top tiers, and so do we. They closed in 2019 and have not been seen since. Is it possible for several levels of the Colosseum to just disappear?
Scrambling for positives, Russell Crowe inaugurated a sleek glass elevator in May, 2023. The result? No one gave a hoot and that's also disappeared, at least into anonymity. Our advice is stick to ground level with Eternal Tours Rome!