The Colosseum arena floor and underground: which ticket, and how it works

Which ticket includes the arena floor?

The prices and dates in this table come from the Tiqets feed, refreshed while you browse.

Two Tiqets options put you on the arena floor, and they are not alike. The first is the most complete; the second is the official "Only Arena" ticket sold with the Mamertine Prison, cheaper and often available at a closer date.

And the arena floor with the tiers?

The official "Full Experience Arena" ticket (€24 plus a €2 fee) is the only self-guided ticket that combines tiers 1 and 2 and the arena floor; it is sold on ticketing.colosseo.it thirty days ahead and goes fast. On Tiqets, the only option that does both is the small-group guided tour with arena access (from €138), in English, French or Spanish, refundable up to 72 hours before.

The underground: how to get down there

The hypogeum — the corridors, cages and lifts that made animals and scenery appear beneath the gladiators' feet — can only be visited with a guide licensed by the archaeological park, in groups of six. The official "Full Experience Underground & Arena" ticket costs €24 plus a €2 fee (€32 with the park's educational tour); it also opens the arena floor, tiers 1 and 2, the Forum, the Palatine and the SUPER sites, and is valid for two days. It is released thirty days before the date, at 9 am Rome time, and goes within one or two minutes in season; six slots a day are released again seven days before if the first batch has sold out.

• Officially: log in to ticketing.colosseo.it a few minutes before 9 am, account created and card ready, thirty days before your date. Try again seven days before, and around midnight for cancellations.
• With a guide, on GetYourGuide: Tiqets has no underground tour, but three guided tours exist on GetYourGuide, all in English. The most complete is the exclusive underground or arena tour with the Forum (2 to 3 hours, 6 people at most, from €143, non-refundable, rated 4.6 on more than 1,500 reviews): make sure you select the "underground" option when booking. Shorter, the underground guided tour with arena floor access (75 to 90 minutes, from €199) is refundable up to three days before and leaves the Forum and Palatine to you. Finally, the Colosseum and Forum tour with optional arena or underground access (from €99 in the standard version, more with the underground, 7 people semi-private) is the best rated.
• By night: "Una Notte al Colosseo" (see below) is the only official option that combines arena floor and underground in the evening.

The attic and the panoramic lift

Since 2024, tiers 4 and 5 of the Colosseum — the attic, or Belvedere — can be visited again, by a panoramic lift. The official "Full Experience Attic" ticket costs €24 plus a €2 fee, also opens tiers 1 and 2, the Forum, the Palatine and the SUPER sites, but neither the arena floor nor the underground. Only eight people per slot: it is the most constrained ticket in the monument, sold out within seconds of release. The view, fifty metres above the arena, stretches to the Palatine and St Peter's.

No platform sells the attic self-guided, and GetYourGuide no longer has a guided tour devoted to it at the time of writing. The only option that climbs above the second tier is the Colosseum by evening guided tour (from €59, in English), whose announced itinerary spends an hour on tiers 3 to 5 before closing time, with the arena floor as an option. Check the listing when you book: itineraries change.

Where and when to check in

Each option has its own starting point. Going to the wrong entrance is the first cause of missed slots, and a missed slot is not refunded.

1. Skip-the-line or official ticket — Straight to the Colosseum, individual visitors' queue on the north side (facing the metro station), fifteen minutes before the time on your ticket, ID in hand. Everyone goes through security.
2. Arena + SUPER sites — At the Touristation office, Piazza d'Aracoeli 16 (at the foot of the Capitoline), at the booked time: video, then escort to the Forum entrance. The Colosseum comes about two hours later, at the time given by the staff.
3. Colosseum + Mamertine, express arena — At the Mamertine Prison office, Clivo Argentario 1, at least one hour before your Colosseum slot. Allow ten to fifteen minutes' walk to the monument.
4. Guided tours — At the meeting point given by Tiqets: Largo della Salara Vecchia (Forum entrance) for the small-group tour with arena, Via delle Terme di Tito for the walking tour. Show the voucher on your phone to the guide, ten to fifteen minutes before.

What you will see on the arena floor

1. The Gladiators' Gate — You step onto the arena through the eastern passage, the reconstructed Porta Triumphalis, the one the fighters paraded through. The sand-covered wooden floor covers only part of the ellipse: the rest leaves the hypogeum open to the sky.
2. The ellipse seen from the centre — 86 metres by 54: this is where you grasp the size of the monument, with the tiers rising fifty metres all around and the visitors on tiers 1 and 2 looking down at you as the Romans watched the fights.
3. The open hypogeum — From the edge of the floor you see the brick walls of the corridors, the housings of the capstans that hoisted cages and trapdoors, and the gallery that led to the Ludus Magnus, the gladiators' school next door.
4. The cross and the imperial box — Facing you, on the north side, the site of the pulvinar, the emperor's box, marked today by a cross. The senators' seats, with their names carved, filled the first row.

Time inside the monument is counted: 90 minutes with a Full Experience ticket, 20 on the arena floor with Only Arena. Staff enforce the timings, especially in season. Photos allowed, no tripods.

In which order to visit the three sites

By day or by night?

In season the archaeological park runs "Una Notte al Colosseo": a one-hour guided tour, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 pm to 11 pm (last entry 9.50 pm), through the first tier, the arena floor and the floodlit underground, in groups of 25 at most, with an exhibition of objects and projections. Official price: €50 (a €24 Full Experience ticket plus €26 for the guide), €28 reduced, free for children under 6; the ticket also opens the Forum and Palatine the day before, the same day or the next. The 2026 season runs from 7 July to 22 October, with no tours on 22 and 24 September or 1 October. Places are sold only on ticketing.colosseo.it, seven days ahead: no platform resells them. Programme and dates on colosseo.it.

On GetYourGuide, two late-day tours offer a similar atmosphere without the underground: the Colosseum by evening guided tour (2 hours, from €59, in English, arena floor optional, refundable up to four days before) and the sunset tour (1 to 1 h 30, from €55, departures in nine languages, non-refundable), which also includes the Forum and Palatine.

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