Rome - where to get tickets

[chickenpieandchips]

Sorry, head is spinning.
Taking kids (teens) to Rome in April. Looked at direct ticket sites for the Vatican and colosseum. Do I book direct? Do I get a tour (especially of the colosseum), do direct tickets from the authorised sites do tours or headphone things?
If not, can anyone recommend some teen friendly tours for there. Enough for the interesting facts, but not too long. There seems like loads of choice.
Any other places we should go. The church made from bones?? Not going to overload the itinerary and they won't want a tour of all the old sites so need a few great choices.
Thank you.
Staying near Ottaviano metro.

I used get your guide and Viator for colosseum and St Peter's, can't remember which for which but both guides were young locals guys and were great.

Wander round Trastevere in the evening. There is a square and they had buskers every night, had everyone up dancing.

A guided tour of the Vatican is essential. You can buy the tickets over there. You can’t miss the people selling them.

A guided tour of the Colosseum isn’t essential, but if it’s affordable for you, then go for it.

The hop on, hop off red tour bus is good for getting around the city.

Booking direct is always the cheapest but be prepared for a lot of bureaucracy. You will have to provide passport numbers for some attractions. Booking the Pantheon for example is something like a 15 step process! However you beat a mahoosive queue!

Viator is easier but you can pay up to four times as much.

Try and do the Scavi tour underneath St Peter's. It's amazing!

I took 9 year old DD a couple of years ago.

I booked Vatican tickets direct and walked through with the self guided headsets - I can’t remember if we pre-booked them, but I think there is the option to do so.

Afterwards go to The Old Bridge Gelateria near the Vatican Museum for the best ice cream.

I would highly recommend the colloseum tour that goes down below the arena. We also did the Roman forum as part of that tour - SO worth it to know what you’re looking at. Our guide was so passionate and his knowledge was incredible. DD loved it and the 3.5 hours flew by.

Capuchin Crypt was interesting and good for a short visit.

Walk over the bridge to Castel Sant Angelo and down to the Vatican at night - spectacular.

We walked absolutely miles - I was a broken woman by day three at which point we figured out the buses which were easy to navigate and a good network.

If you’re near Campo di Fiori, get yourself to Roscioli for the most delicious pizza and baked goods you will ever eat.

We had the best time. DD absolutely loved it - one of the best trips I’ve ever done.

Thank you!
I'll get googling.
There is an optical illusion museum, is this any good? Have done Twist in London so any better than that?

You want the official site for the underground tour of the Colosseum. Its the cheapest. I've done it other ways and this was the best.
No queues, access to all the areas that other tickets don't allow you to go , a great tour and the Forum is included.

Colosseum | CoopCulture

Vatican tickets and headsets ordered direct! Can do the bits we like then. And seems the cheapest.
Do they do headsets at the colosseum?

please be aware that if you book “Vatican museums” in order to see the Sistine chapel you will be required to walk through the WHOLE complex - I should say shuffle through given the heaving mass of humanity - before you get to the chapel at the end by which time you are basically losing the will to live and couldn’t care less about the ceiling 🤪.

If you do want to do this I strongly suggest you book the earliest slot possible to avoid the crowds.

The colosseum gets booked up early - we used Viator and got tickets at twice the price of normal entry - all the company did was print out the tickets but we did get in!

Both places will ask to see ID to match ticket to person.

Strongly recommend Fat Tire Segway tour - a brilliant way to see sights with a guide

Vatican museum is great, but very crowded and very big. Plough through it and get to Sistine Chapel. Then another day head to Palazzo Massimo (The National Roman Museum), which is far far less crowded and has a better and more engaging collection. Free for under 18s and about £6 per adult. No queue, just roll up and buy on the day. Start on the top floor and head downwards. They have rebuilt frescoed rooms which are amazing. The statues are more complete and there are soms really interesting ones (Hermaphrodite was a sight). DC liked the gallery showing different noses. It is not too big, so no museum fatigue. Plenty of chairs and decent loos!

St Peters is awesome, but the queue is pure madness, and I assume you are going over Easter? Lots of other amazing churches. We liked Santa Maria Maggiore with Bethlehem crib relics and massive illuminati symbol.

Book a timed entry slot for Collesseum. Lots of tickets include entry to the Forum which is worth a look. Get them in advance from coop culture website - buying on the day takes forever.

Mouth of truth worth a quick visit. There are hundreds of hop-on-hop-off bus companies. We walked everywhere, but the buses look handy and we would have done them if DC had been a bit younger and more tired.

By the looks of it you do have to walk round the Vatican to get to the chapel. I'll just keep thinking of MN.
I think you can only get colosseum tickets direct a month in advance. I'll aim for the underground ones first. I've got Taylor Swift tickets so this can't be beyond me.
I have 2 under 16s so think a Segway tour is out.
I think DD is more excited about the giant Zara.
Definitely adding Trastevre on the list for dinner one day.

Bocca della Verità is fun, and free (can make a donation if desired(. Queue usually short as it's literally a few minutes to pose w hands inside the mouth for pic.

The Basilica San Clemente (close to Colosseo) is stunning and very interesting.

Prepare for lots of walking..... Vatican to Piazza Navona via Castel S Angelo is a nice one. We uses buses and metro a lot. They take payment via contact less cards now which is handy.

Yes, there's various options though. The Underground tour lets you listen to the guide through the headphones. You go under the stage where the slaves would be kept and you go up onto the stage. You sometimes get to go right up to the top level but its very Italian so sometimes not 🙂. None of those areas are available if you self tour though. Basically it means for at least those bits there's no crowds ( apart from your small group)

I'm aiming for the official 'didactic' underground tour but tickets aren't on sale yet. We're going mid April, end of school holidays here so hopefully miss the Easter crowds.

The teens will love a food tour! We did a brilliant one - Prati by Sunset. The amount of food was crazy! All delicious. Thoroughly recommend foodtourrome.com/prati-sunset-rome-food-tour/

@ScrummyDiva2 thank you! Might be cheaper to send my 17DS on that every night 😂.

17yr old DS. I'm not taking 17 sons!

There's another thread about the colosseum in which various people (including me!) add saying they can't access the link to buy tickets via the official website. Are you able to? If so, via what sort of device, phone or something else? I've tried two phones and a laptop, can access the main site but as soon as I click "check availability" I get an error message saying something about Octofence 😫have also been phoning for 3 days and no luck, and they haven't replied to my email either! Driving me mad

Took DS9 and DS12 last year, they loved this: https://welcometo-rome.it/welcome-to-rome-experience/

Do it at the start of your trip so they get their heads round it all.

Hire the big trike bikes in Borghese Gardens for a half day.

The Da Vinci Museum is cool, the one by the Vatican, loads of interactive wooden puzzles and stuff.

Castel Sant Angelo also good, book ahead to avoid queues. Colloseum excellent but book official tickets. Climb to top of the Wedding Cake.

We stayed in Trastavere, excellent for restaurants and a mooch.

How long are you going for? When I was there for a week we went on a day trip to Florence. Only about 90 mins on the (reasonably priced) train and easy to get around all the sights when we were there.

@SagittariusDwarf I have an iPad that seems to work. My laptop doesn't. My DH has probably done something funky to the Apple devices in the family.

All really helpful tips. Thanks!

@tpmumtobe thank you. I had seen that
Mentioned on some itinerary page so thanks for the link again!

We used get your guide for Vatican and collesseum last summer. My children are a bit younger (8 and 10).
Vatican was so busy and so think we would have struggled to keep the children going without it was much bigger than I expected and was hot.

Collesseum was excellent, was a group family one, very informative and kids really engaged.
I liked them as skipped the queues going in etc only hassle was finding the guide at the beginning was bit tricky.

We did the Illusion museum as had 1/2 a day spare and close to hotel. It wasn't very big but good fun, stayed a few hours. Haven't been to the London one but imagine the're fairly similar. Lots of the illusions I'd seen before.