I've been to Rome, I saw the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican, and Piazza Navona. On my Mediterranean Cruise it was time to dig deeper (pun intended), I decided to go inside the Colosseum and into The Roman Forum.
For tickets I suggest getting them anywhere except the Colosseum, the line was extremely long. I got mine from the pushy lady at the visitors kiosk in
Civitavecchia. The line at The Forum was long, but not nearly as insane as at the Colosseum. But there were also 4 ships in port that day bringing somewhere around 10,000 extra visitors to the city.
I opted not to do any sort of tour of the Colosseum, while I'm sure I missed some because of it, I also didn't feel like I missed a real lot. If you're not going to do a tour I would suggest reading up a bit on the Colosseum before hand. I didn't find there was much information provided inside the Colosseum. But the walk through the Colosseum was worth it, the inside was just cool. You could walk through several layers and see the different view, though I never did figure out where the box seats of the day would have been.
I've heard rumors that they are going to cover the underground area of the Colosseum, it's above ground now but was underground when the Colosseum was in use. Then they will offer tours of the underground section. A small portion was covered when I went, leading me to believe the process has begun. If that's the case, I think it takes away one of the reason to go inside the Colosseum. Looking at the underground tunnels is a key component of the Colosseum.
I also did not do a tour of The Forum and I wonder if I should have. I honestly thought it was a bit boring. There were more signs here then there had been at the Colosseum, so there was some information available here. But most of the area seemed like park land where you couldn't go on the grass.
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| Inside the Roman Forum |
I would suggest skipping The Forum in favor of some of the other interesting sites in Rome, but I do think the Colosseum is worth entry if you have more then a day or two in Rome. The outside of the Colosseum is impressive in its own right, but with so much history in Rome it's hard to prioritize visiting the inside of the Colosseum if you're only there for one day.
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