Colosseum Entry Ticket

The Colosseum was built as a political gesture. Vespasian began it around 72 AD on the site of the artificial lake in Nero's private palace, handing back to the Roman public a piece of ground the previous emperor had taken for himself. His son Titus opened it in 80 AD with a hundred days of games. Its Roman name was the Flavian Amphitheatre; the one we use comes from the Colossus, a thirty metre bronze statue of Nero that stood beside it.

It held somewhere around fifty thousand people, seated by rank, and emptied through eighty numbered entrances designed so the whole building could clear in minutes. The system worked well enough that modern stadium designers still study it. The exterior stacks three orders of columns, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, on four storeys of travertine quarried at Tivoli and hauled twenty miles to the city.

The arena floor is gone, which is why the interior now looks like a cross section. What you see beneath is the hypogeum, two levels of tunnels, cages and lift shafts added under Domitian, where animals and scenery were held and then raised into the arena through trapdoors. Counterweighted lifts did the work. A day's programme moved through the space like machinery.

The building survived because Rome kept using it: as a fortress, as housing, as a quarry for the marble that went into Renaissance palaces. Roughly two thirds of the original stone is missing. Earthquakes took the southern outer wall, and the ring of brick buttresses on the north side is nineteenth century repair work holding what remained.

Standard tickets normally also cover the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill next door, with one entry to each and a validity of about twenty-four hours. The arena floor and the underground are separate upgrades. Entry is by timed slot and there is a security check.

Entrigo Tickets is an independent reseller. We are not the official Colosseum website, and we are not operated by or affiliated with the venue. Tickets are sourced through official ticketing channels and trusted suppliers, and the price shown may include a service fee covering secure payment processing, customer support and booking assistance. The venue sets opening hours, entry conditions and capacity, and can change them.