Rome Tourist Card

How the Rome Tourist Card works

The Rome Tourist Card is not a city card but a combination ticket from Tiqets. You use it to put together your own package. The Colosseum is always included, you choose two further attractions yourself, and two audio guides are added at no extra cost.

The five building blocks

1. Colosseum with Roman Forum. A fixed part of the card. You choose between several versions, for example with an audio guide or with a multimedia video about ancient Rome.
2. Vatican Museums with Sistine Chapel or Castel Sant'Angelo. For the Vatican Museums, you can choose between a skip-the-line ticket and accompanied entry.
3. St Peter's Basilica or Pantheon. For St Peter's Basilica there are several versions, including reserved entry with an audio guide app, an English-language guided tour and the ticket with the climb up the dome.
4. Audio guide app for the city. More than 100 stops in Rome, with pictures, texts and maps that also work offline.
5. Digital audio guide for the Colosseum. Separate, and in addition to the version you chose for the Colosseum.

After purchase, you also receive a 10 per cent discount code, which is valid for one month for further bookings in Rome. You can use it, for example, for the Galleria Borghese, a sightseeing tour or Santa Maria Maggiore.

The choice within the building blocks matters, and for a very practical reason. In high season, the Colosseum and the Vatican Museums are booked up early, and regular tickets can no longer be had at short notice. Individual versions, on the other hand, are often still available. When you buy, you first choose the date, then one version and time for each building block, and you can see straight away what is available. All tickets then arrive by email. You store them in the Tiqets app or print out the QR codes.

One point is often overlooked in comparisons: the Vatican and St Peter's Basilica are in different building blocks. This means you can take both together. What is not possible, however, is to combine the Vatican Museums and Castel Sant'Angelo, because these two are in the same building block and exclude each other.

Does the card pay off?

In purely financial terms, the card is not worth it. As a rule, you pay more for the package than if you book the included services individually.

The card has no fixed price, because the services can be chosen. Tickets are always cheapest on the official websites of the attractions. Availability there is often poor, however. On ticket platforms, the same thing costs considerably more. The following overview shows the ranges within which the individual tickets fall.

For three attractions plus an audio guide, this comes to roughly €55 to €134. The Rome Tourist Card is usually above that. People still buy it, but for a reason other than price: because each building block offers several versions, you are more likely to find an available slot on the days when you are actually in Rome.

For your travel planning, this means: if you are planning early and have time on your hands, individually booked tickets will cost you less. If, on the other hand, your travel dates are fixed and the slots you want are running short, the card means paying extra to fit the three major sights into those days at all.

Purchase and documents

The card is sold by Tiqets; you can pay by credit card, PayPal or instant bank transfer (Sofort). The confirmation email contains all the admission tickets. You save the QR codes on your smartphone, print them out or store them in the Tiqets app. You also receive access to the two audio guides and the discount code for further bookings.

The card cannot be cancelled after purchase, because individual appointments are booked for you. Only buy it once your travel dates are fixed.

What speaks against the card

• The scope is limited to three attractions. Rome has considerably more to offer, and other passes cover a larger part of it. Public transport is not included, and neither is an airport transfer.
• You do not save money with the card. If you book early yourself on the official websites, you pay less.
• The card is not always available. It is only sold if all three services are available. Sometimes switching to another version solves the problem, sometimes it does not.
• Cancellation or rebooking is not possible. The appointments are fixed at the time of purchase.

For families

There are reduced cards for children and young people. In this case, however, do the maths carefully. At most Roman attractions, children pay nothing or very little anyway, so the advantage of the card is considerably smaller for them.

Still undecided? The direct comparison of all eight Rome passes is on the home page.