The ruined heart of ancient Rome: temples, basilicas and arches in the valley below the emperors' Palatine Hill.
Walk the Via Sacra where triumphs passed, stand where Caesar was cremated, then climb to the Farnese gardens for the view.
Forum time, spelled outMinutes in the ruins, not just tour length
Official prices alongsideThe €18 Park tickets next to every tour
Free cancellationOn every Forum and Palatine tour here
Named ticketsBring photo ID that matches your booking
Tours
Choose your Roman Forum tour
In the centre, Rome's most reviewed ancient Rome tour, with the Palatine and the Forum after the Colosseum. On the
left, one of the few guided tours that skips the Colosseum and stays in the ruins. On the right, the cheapest guided way into all three.
One of the few Viator tours that skips the Colosseum and gives the ruins the whole time: Forum, Palatine and the reopened Domus Tiberiana. Tickets and headsets included.
Rome's most reviewed ancient Rome tour: the Colosseum first, then the Palatine and the Forum with a licensed guide. Pick a 3-hour option if you want the ruins guided too.
What's included
Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine entry (Park ticket worth €18, or €24 with the arena)
Licensed guide and headsets (guided options)
Arena floor on Arena options; audio app on app options
Crown Tours' 2.5-hour combo splits the time evenly: an hour in the Colosseum, then about 45 minutes each in the Forum and on the Palatine. The cheapest guided way into all three.
What's included
Colosseum ticket (€18, or €24 with the arena) and €2 booking fee
Most "Forum" tours on Viator are Colosseum tours with the ruins at the end. The column to watch is how long the guide
actually spends in the Forum and on the Palatine.
Under-18s enter the Park free, but tours still charge a child rate for the guide. The Forum and Palatine tours
cancel free up to 3 or 7 days ahead on the combos and 24 hours ahead on the private tour, the ticket and the twilight walk. Both Domus
Aurea tours are non-refundable.
Before you book
The Forum is already in your Colosseum ticket.
Here is the thing most "Roman Forum ticket" pages skip. The Park's standard ticket, Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine,
costs €18 and includes one entry to the Forum and Palatine within 24 hours of your timed Colosseum slot, before or after it.
Every combo tour on this page uses that ticket or a pricier version of it. You do not need a second ticket for the ruins.
The official Forum-first ticket is the Forum Pass SUPER: also €18, no Colosseum, no time slot, and the only standard
ticket that opens the SUPER sites, the painted rooms of the House of Augustus, the Aula Isiaca, Santa Maria Antiqua and the
Domus Tiberiana halls. What no ticket gives you is the story. The Forum is low walls, stumps of columns and a few signs.
A guide is the difference between "some ruins" and the spot where Rome's Senate met.
24
Hours you get to use the Forum and Palatine entry on a standard Colosseum ticket, before
or after your slot. One entry only: walk out of the gate and it is gone.
Roman ForumPalatine HillSUPER sitesImperial Fora
Three columns and a cornice: much of the Forum survives in fragments like this, which is why a guide helps.
01
Need a Forum ticket?
Not with a Colosseum ticket: the €18 standard ticket includes one Forum and Palatine entry.
02
What are SUPER sites?
Painted rooms and small museums, open only on the Forum Pass SUPER or a Full Experience ticket.
03
How long?
Two to three hours for the Forum and the Palatine; most of a day with the Colosseum.
04
Who can skip a guide?
Readers who have done their homework and want to linger. Buy the Forum Pass SUPER and take your time.
Your visit
How a Forum tour runs
Two and a half to three hours on a combo, under two on the Forum-only tour. Most combos do the Colosseum first.
01
Meet by Colosseo metro
Most groups gather at Largo Gaetana Agnesi, above the metro, or at an office on Via della Polveriera. Arrive 15 to 20 minutes early with your ID.
15 to 20 minutes
02
Security and the Colosseum
On a combo, the airport-style check and the Colosseum come first. The Forum-only tour walks straight to the ruins.
About 1 hour
03
Up the Palatine
The emperors' palaces, the stadium, the Domus Tiberiana and the Farnese gardens, with the view down over the Forum.
20 to 60 minutes
04
Down the Via Sacra
The Arch of Titus, the House of the Vestals, the Temple of Caesar, the Curia and the Arch of Septimius Severus.
Photo ID for every name on the booking, original or at least a clear copy your operator accepts.
A refillable bottle: the Park has 10 drinking fountains, and the old cast-iron "nasoni" run cold all day.
A hat and sunscreen from April to October. The Forum floor has almost no shade.
Shoes with grip for polished Roman paving, and no big backpacks: large bags are refused at security.
Forum opens9 a.m.Half an hour after the Colosseum, and quieter for it.
Standard ticket€18Colosseum plus one Forum and Palatine entry within 24 hours.
Forum Pass SUPER€18No Colosseum, no time slot, the SUPER sites included.
Forum tours30 to 105 minThe real time in the ruins, not the tour length on the listing.
Free daysFirst SundaysPlus 25 April, 2 June and 4 November. No SUPER sites.
Domus AureaFri to SunGuided visits only, on the Oppian Hill, with its own ticket.
Where it happens
Where the gates are
One valley, three main gates
Main Forum gate: Largo della Salara Vecchia 5/6, on Via dei Fori Imperiali
The Forum and the Palatine are one fenced archaeological area between the Colosseum and the Capitoline Hill. Tours meet
near Colosseo metro and walk you to a gate; on your own, pick the gate by what you want to see first. Security checks run at
every entrance, and they move slowest at the Arch of Titus, where the Colosseum crowd arrives.
Largo della Salara Vecchia: Forum first, with a lift
Arch of Titus: from Piazza del Colosseo, up the Via Sacra
Via di San Gregorio 30: Palatine first, usually the shortest line
4.6★★★★★ 25,921 reviews · Colosseum, Forum and Palatine guided tour Viator and Tripadvisor rating
★★★★★
This area is so rich with a complex history that it is great when a guide can simplify it for you [...] It brings the history to life.
★★★★★
As a retired history teacher, I strongly recommend a guided tour like this one over trying to do it on your own.
★★★★★
Alessandra was a very personable and knowledgeable guide. Seeing the Domus Tiberiana was spectacular!
★★★★★
She even went off the beaten path a few times and showed us things that weren't necessarily on the itinerary (View from the top of Palentine Hill, Arch of Constantine, etc).
★★★★★
Learned a lot and saw multiple sites within the Roman forum I wouldn’t have explored as well on my own. Beautiful view from Palentine hill.
★★★★★
The audioguide provided quite a lot of good context for the stuff you see across the three sites that you wouldn't normally get from the placards on site, just be sure to bring your headphones/earbuds of course.
★★★★★
The Colosseum was of course fantastic, but she really made the Forum and Palantine hill come to life with historical perspective and stories that were fascinating.
★★★★★
Glad we booked guided tour, would have missed a lot of the history. Our guide Valerie was informative and witty.
★★★★★
The Domus Aurea is an amazing survivor from the past. The size is mind-boggling and the innovative technology it housed is hard to believe.
Ten minutes away
Add Nero's Golden House
Across Via Labicana, under the Oppian Hill. Open Friday to Sunday only, guided by booking, and not part of any Forum ticket.
Five minutes' walk from the Colosseum, under the Oppian Hill, the vaulted halls of Nero's Golden House survive in the dark at a steady 10°C. C.I.S. Tours hands you the timed ticket at the metro, a guide takes you through the frescoed rooms, and a VR headset rebuilds one hall as Nero saw it.
The Forum is the most important square mile of the ancient world and one of the hardest to read. Here is how to
make sense of it.
What you are looking at
The valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline was a swamp until the late 7th century BC, when the Romans drained it and
started building. For over a thousand years this was where Rome voted, prayed, shopped, held trials and buried its heroes. The
Curia, the brick Senate house, still stands because it became a church. The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina survived the same
way, with a baroque facade jammed between its columns, and so did the round Temple of Romulus. The last monument went up in 608 AD, the Column of
Phocas. After that the valley silted up and became Campo Vaccino, the cow field, until the excavations of the 19th and 20th
centuries dug it out again.
What survives is uneven. A few buildings stand to the roof; most are a platform, a stump of column or a line of paving. That is
why first-timers walk through in 40 minutes and leave underwhelmed, and why the same people come out of a guided tour talking about
the Vestal Virgins and the spot where Caesar's body was burned.
Temple columns, a triumphal arch and the Palatine pines: the Forum in one frame.
Forum first or Palatine first?
Palatine first, if you can. The hill is where Rome began, according to the legend of Romulus, and where the emperors later
built palaces so big that "palatium" gave us the word palace. From the edge of the Farnese gardens you look straight down on the
Forum, and the layout clicks into place before you walk it. Enter from Via di San Gregorio, climb, then come down past the
Domus Tiberiana into the Forum and leave by Largo della Salara Vecchia. Combo tours often run it the other way because they come
from the Colosseum and enter at the Arch of Titus.
The honest small print: on most combo tours the Forum gets 30 to 50 minutes at the end of a long morning, when
everyone is hot and tired. If the ruins are the point of your trip, book the Forum-only tour, or a private guide who lets you set the order.
The SUPER sites
Inside the ordinary Forum and Palatine area sit a dozen smaller places with fragile paintings, which the Park opens only to
holders of the Forum Pass SUPER or a Full Experience ticket. The House of Augustus has some of the finest Roman wall paintings in
the city (closed Mondays). The Aula Isiaca and the Loggia Mattei, Santa Maria Antiqua with its early medieval frescoes, the Curia
and the Temple of Romulus are on the list too, along with the exhibition halls of the Domus Tiberiana, the emperors' first real
palace, reopened in 2023 after decades shut. The House of Livia is closed for restoration. Our
SUPER sites guide goes room by room.
The Palatine has the shade, the pines and the best view over the Forum.
Heat, stone and timing
The Forum is a bowl of pale stone. From May to September it holds the heat, and there is very little shade on the valley floor.
Be at a gate at 9 a.m. when it opens, half an hour after the Colosseum, and you get the place almost to yourself for a while. Bring
water and refill at the fountains, wear shoes with grip, and remember the standard ticket lets you in once: there is no popping out
for lunch. In winter the light is lovely, but the last entry moves to 3.30 p.m. from 25 October.
The Domus Tiberiana's arches rise straight out of the Forum onto the Palatine.
Straight answers to what people ask most about the Roman Forum and the Palatine.
Is the Roman Forum included in the Colosseum ticket?
Yes. The standard €18 Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine ticket gives you one entry to the Forum and Palatine area within 24 hours before or after your timed Colosseum slot. Leave the area and that entry is used up. The ticket guide compares every option.
How much does it cost to visit the Roman Forum?
The official price is €18, plus a €2 online booking fee. EU citizens aged 18 to 24 pay €2 and under-18s go free. On Viator, a Forum and Palatine ticket starts at $41 and a guided Forum tour at $53, because you pay for the guide and the ticket handling on top of the Park price.
What is the Forum Pass SUPER?
An official €18 ticket for the Roman Forum, the Palatine and the Imperial Fora, with no Colosseum and no time slot. It is the only standard ticket that opens the SUPER sites, such as the House of Augustus, the Aula Isiaca and Santa Maria Antiqua. See the SUPER sites guide.
Which Roman Forum entrance is best?
Largo della Salara Vecchia, on Via dei Fori Imperiali, if you want the Forum first. Via di San Gregorio, south of the Colosseum, if you want the Palatine first and the quietest queue. The Arch of Titus gate fills up with people coming straight from the Colosseum. More in the entrances guide.
How long do you need for the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill?
Plan two to three hours for both on your own, more with the SUPER sites. Combo tours give the Forum 30 to 50 minutes after the Colosseum; the Forum-only tour here spends 1 hour 45 minutes in the ruins. One-day plan.
Is a guided tour of the Roman Forum worth it?
For most first visits, yes. The Forum is a field of broken columns and low walls with few signs, and a guide turns it back into the Senate house, the temples and the Via Sacra. Skip the guide if you have read up and want to linger. Guide or no guide.
What are the Roman Forum opening hours?
The Forum and Palatine open at 9 a.m. (the Colosseum at 8.30). Until 24 October 2026 the Park closes at 6.30 p.m., last entry 5.30. From 25 October 2026 to 28 February 2027 it closes at 4.30 p.m., last entry 3.30. Closed on 25 December and 1 January. See the winter hours post.
Is the Roman Forum free on the first Sunday of the month?
Yes, and on 25 April, 2 June and 4 November. Free tickets are handed out in order of arrival at the Piazza del Colosseo office, near the Temple of Venus and Rome. The SUPER sites and the Curia stay closed, and the queues are long.
Can you visit the Roman Forum at night?
Only on the Park's own "A Night at the Roman Forum" guided visits: Fridays, 75 minutes, €35, sold only on the official ticket site. Otherwise you see the floodlit ruins from the Capitoline terraces, which is where the twilight walk takes you. Night options.
Is the Roman Forum wheelchair accessible?
Partly. The three main gates are step-free, there are lifts at Largo della Salara Vecchia and the Curia, a lifting platform at the Arch of Titus, and a smooth route past the Via Sacra to the main temples. The top of the Palatine still involves short steep paths and uneven paving.
Is the Domus Aurea part of the Roman Forum?
No. Nero's Golden House is on the Oppian Hill, across Via Labicana from the Colosseum, with its own ticket. It opens Friday to Sunday for guided visits only; the official price is €26 with the guide and virtual reality. Domus Aurea guide.
Do I need ID to enter the Roman Forum?
Yes. Every ticket carries a name and you show matching photo ID at the gate. From 9 May 2026, a name can be changed only once, by the seventh day before the visit, and only for a typo or a documented reason. 2026 ticket rules.
Ready to book
Pick your guide, pick your gate.
Bring photo ID that matches the names on your booking. Free cancellation on every Forum and Palatine tour here.
Forum only
★ 4.41 h 45 minFree cancellation
