Rome · Piazza del Colosseo
Colosseum: tickets, hours and how to get there
The Flavian Amphitheatre, with one official ticket that also covers the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill. Official prices, seasonal hours, free days and the arena and underground tickets.
Today
Opening hours for every month are on the Opening hours page.
Checked against the official website on 23 October 2026 · Official source
In short
- The official 24-hour ticket for the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill costs 18 €. Tickets are named, you must show an ID, and the Colosseum entry has a compulsory time slot; the Forum and Palatine have no slot. Under-18s enter free but must book online, and EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay 2 €.
- Our partner Tiqets, a third party, sells the Colosseum and Roman Forum visit with an audio guide or a 25-minute video at 37 € (price seen on 23 October 2026), plus guided tours and arena tickets. The cards say what each product adds to the official ticket.
- The Colosseum opens at 8:30 and the Forum and Palatine at 9:00. Closing runs from 16:30 in winter to 19:15 in summer, with the last entry one hour earlier. The Park is closed on 25 December and 1 January.
- Entry is free on the first Sunday of the month, on 25 April, 2 June and 4 November. There is no booking: you collect a ticket at the ticket office, and the arena, the underground, the upper levels and the SUPER sites are not included.
- Bags may not exceed 30 × 40 × 15 cm and there is no cloakroom. The nearest stations are Colosseo on Metro line B and, according to public sources, Colosseo-Fori Imperiali on line C; tram 3 and several buses stop nearby.
The outer ring and the arcades
The façade has four storeys. The lower three are arcades with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian half-columns, and the fourth is a solid wall with windows and pilasters. Baedeker's 1909 guide records the outer circumference as 573 yards, the long axis as 205 yards and the height as 157 feet, figures of their time.
The public entered through 76 numbered arches, of which 29 are still visible on the north side, according to the Park.
The cavea and the seating
Seats were assigned by rank: the imperial box on the short axis, senators closest to the arena, the equestrians behind them and the common people in the highest tier, the maenianum summum, according to the Park.
Capacity is uncertain. Baedeker (1909) put it at 40,000 to 50,000 and called the older figure of 87,000 exaggerated; Wikipedia gives modern estimates between 50,000 and 80,000.
The arena and the hypogeum
The arena was once covered by a floor, partly rebuilt today on the east side. Beneath it lie the hypogeum, the underground rooms with lifts and trapdoors for the shows. They were built in wood for the opening and turned into masonry under Domitian, then burned in 217 and rebuilt.
Today the area covers about half a hectare, with 14 corridors in all, placed symmetrically on the two sides of the large central corridor. You can visit it with the Full Experience Underground & Arena ticket or on a guided visit.
First and second level, terraces and the Colosseum Museum
The standard 24-hour ticket covers the first and second level of the Colosseum, with panoramic terraces, and the Colosseum Museum, but not the arena floor or the underground. Temporary exhibitions are held on the second level.
A lift for visitors with reduced mobility links the first and second level, according to the Park.
The intermediate gallery, the third level and the attic
The Full Experience Attic ticket opens a route in five stages: the gallery between the second and third level, the water management system, the tituli picti with traces of red paint on the travertine blocks, the third level and the levels above the attic. Panels are in Italian and English and include drawings and prints by Luigi Canina.
The attic can only be reached by steep steps. From 9 November 2026 the official page says entry is for groups of up to 25 people every 30 minutes and that latecomers are not admitted: read the instructions on the official ticket page.
The Commodus Passage
The Commodus Passage is a vaulted underground corridor that linked the pulvinar, the imperial box, with the outside. It was not part of the original plan and was cut between the 1st and 2nd century AD by digging into the amphitheatre's foundations, according to the Park.
It has its own Full Experience ticket, at 32 €, with small groups and fixed days and languages.
The Arch of Constantine and the Temple of Venus and Roma
The Arch of Constantine stands beside the Colosseum's entrance. It was raised after the victory over Maxentius in 312, and much of its relief work was reused from earlier buildings, according to Baedeker (1909), who mentions the Dacian reliefs of Trajan's time.
Opposite the entrance are the remains of the Temple of Venus and Roma, next to the ticket office in Piazza del Colosseo.
