How To Buy Colosseum Tickets (Even When It’s Sold Out!) — ALONG DUSTY ROADS

It Pays To Delay: Know When To Buy Them

Usually, for big tourist attractions like this, it doesn’t just make a lot of sense to buy your tickets as far in advance as possible: it’s a necessity.

That is absolutely the case for Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ in Milan, where tickets are only released four times a year, sell out months in advance, and are like gold dust.

The same goes for seeing Michelangelo’s David at the Galleria dell’Accademia

Thankfully, the Colosseum was built to hold around 50,000 blood thirsty Romans, so offers quite a lot more room than a gallery or museum. Also, the new ticketing system only makes certain tickets available online just one month before the visit date.

This means that, despite being one of the most popular places in Rome, it is much easier to secure a ticket than similarly famous sights in Italy.

As we were quite late in finalising our dates + routes on this early summer trip to Italy, the first search for Colosseum tickets only took place two weeks before our arrival in Rome. Our dates fell on a weekend, so demand was high and the ’24-hour Colosseum only’ ticket was the only type available.

Here at Along Dusty Roads, we say that we make the mistakes so you don’t have to; but sometimes we also find the solutions so that you don’t have to! Andrew did a lot of trial and error searches over a few days with the dates and ticket types, and established four things on the new system:

1. ‘not available online’ does not mean that the tickets are sold out or won’t eventually be released for sale on the website

2. the staggered monthly release of the ‘full access’ tickets can work to your advantage

3. the ‘underground + arena’ and the ‘attic’ tickets consistently sell out

4. you can still get an excellent ‘full’ access’ ticket less than a week before your dates

With the new ticketing system, the ‘full access’ and other tickets are only made available online one month before visit dates.

So, if you’re going to Rome on September 16th, you can only buy those tickets on the official website from August 16th.

Planning to visit on June 2nd? Those tickets will only go on sale on May 2nd!

That’s why those amongst you who are particularly prepared, and perhaps arrived on this post after seeing that no tickets are available for your dates, shouldn’t panic just yet: the reason you can’t buy Colosseum tickets months online in advance is not because they’re already sold out, it’s because they’re…