Nero's Golden Palace: With Colosseum

Absolutely excellent tour guide with suberb knowledge. Could not have been better. We loved it. Well -paced to accomodate a family member with a bad knee. Yet so packed with great information!

By starting with Nero's Palace you can see the basis of why the Colosseum was built onto the structure itself.

Our tour guide Elisa for the first half of the tour was amazing, and the Domus Aurea was very interesting. I would highly recommend.

The tour of the ancient city and the Coliseum was excellent. We had one of the best tour guides. She was previously an archeologist so I felt like she had some real in-depth knowledge. She had a bright and charming personality. Her English was easy to understand. I had high hopes for Nero’s Palace tour. The virtual tour was very cool but short. Most of the palace is still being reconstructed so it was really hard to envision what it would have looked like. Not a lot of frescos to view. Mostly underground so take a jacket with you...it’s chilly. Might be great for a structural engineer with an imagination. The virtual portion was the only worthwhile part of the Nero tour.

This tour package is perfect for anybody wanting to see Ancient Rome highlights in one day. Yes it is a lot of walking and you will be wiped by the end of the day but the tour guides do a great job of allowing breaks and not overloading with too much information. Nero's Palace was very interesting!

The first part of the tour, of the Colosseum and Forum, was easily five stars. The second part, Nero's Palace, was three, and a bit disappointing. Splitting the difference and giving it four. Overall, still worth the price. The tour of the Colosseum and Forum was led by Vincenzio (from Mars) who was funny, full of stories, and attentive to any and all questions we might have. It's impossible to fit the whole of both sites into just a few hours, but Vincenzio came close. After that portion of the tour, I had hundreds of photographs and a much more thorough understanding of Roman imperial politics. I was very much looking forward to Nero's Palace, so I was disappointed at how very crowded the tour was. Most of the time, I couldn't see or hear the guide (the Nero's Palace portion of the tour does not use earphones). I constantly missed information, and the guide offered no opportunity for questions. The VR portion, while impressive, was minimal. The majority of the tour was simply walking and struggling to get a view of whatever the guide was pointing at. That said, there were some seriously impressive things to see inside the Palace. Just be prepared to look them up later. You do need to wear a hardhat inside Nero's Palace, but it's no more dangerous than any light construction site, and far safer than Roman traffic. Be sure to wear a sweater, though--it's cavelike and cold.

Our tour guide, Vincenza, set the stage for understanding the time period, the place, the people and the environment of the Colosseum and the Forum. Information was informative, the specific stops along the way were beautiful to look at as well as deepened our understanding. The tour felt thorough and not rushed despite growing crowds. Vincenza moved us from space to space while sharing knowledge and allowing time for questions. After the Forum, he walked us to the Domus Aurea, where he departed and we joined up with another tour guide. The virtual tour was remarkable. Overall today was a day when I think I finally began to understand the relationships between these three areas. This is a great tour!

You need to go ahead and book this tour! We had a few wonderful hours with our very informative guide, Bea, and we learned a great deal from her. We started with a tour of the Colosseum, and then proceeded through the ancient Roman Forum. Bea was very thorough, and pointed out all points of interest and stopped to take the time to show us artist renderings of what the ruins would have appeared like in ancient times with a few books she brought along. We finished the morning (sadly without Bea) in the Domus Aurea. Here, another capable (albeit less enthusiastic) guide told us all about Nero's Golden Palace. The virtual reality reconstruction of the Domus Aurea is absolutely amazing. All in all, I adored this tour, and I would highly recommend it.

Each area was explained with the history, even if it meant correcting fallacies from the past. There IS a lot of walking, and stairs - so, plan this tour when you are rested. Having the Golden Palace virtual reality experience after the history of the rest of the tour was useful. (Virtual reality could have been the whole 5 hrs and I wouldn't have complained - it was awesome).

I have toured the Colosseum and forum previously, but wanted my husband to enjoy the experience as well. I was excited about the additional Domus Aurea tour, as I have never seen it. This tour blew the last one (EFT) straight out of the water. The group was SO much smaller than those around us provided by other companies, our guide was incredibly well versed in ALL subjects pertaining to ancient Rome, and the Palace was even more amazing than I'd hoped. Seeing the archaeological process up close and personal was incredible, and the virtual reality experience, which I thought would be cheezy, was awesome and created an extremely realistic perspective. Also, if touring in the summer, the cool temperatures underground are a fantastic reprieve. Most definitely highly recommended.

Eliza was an archaeologist who gave us the best insight possible. We used what she taught in other tours with less informed guides. She also was very attentive, always pointing out water refill points and giving us a chance to catch our breathes if we were moving quickly or moving us to a shady location when possible. She didn’t need any visual aids because of how educated she was, giving us amazing visual descriptions and pointing out things, in the coliseum for example, that were often overlooked. Although her specialty was Egyptology, she even included amazing anecdotes during her excavations to help illustrate much of how we were able to interpret the Roman history and findings as they were discovered. Everything from the history of different marbles and their implications to the comparison of lifestyles between rich and poor romans gave us an incredible insight that made the tour go by in a breeze. Oft over looked, the underground tour through Nero’s Golden Palace with the oculus rift is a must.

Our guide was very knowledgeable and answered all questions the group asked. We were very glad we booked this tour. And after looking at the huge crowds trying to negotiate getting into the Colosseum, we were glad, and it is really a must to book all tours with skip the line access. You won’t be sorry. I would have rated this review with 5 stars but our portion of the tour for Nero’s Golden House was not completed by our guide that we had grown to love. It’s not the tour companies fault sine the Golden House is handled separately with it’s own archeological tour guides. Our tour was yesterday and the weather was terrific, although no matter what the weather is outside, make sure you bring a jacket for the Golden House tour as it is underground and very cold. The VR aspect of the tour made it well worth it.

5 hours flew by so quickly. Loved the tour! Seeing Nero's palace was the cherry on top of a great experience. Our tour guide was fabulous!!

What could be better than having a tour of ancient Roman sites with an archeologist as tour guide? The amount of information was as great as the sites are overwhelming. You can't go wrong with this tour.

I was not sure about signing up to this tour at first. 100 Euros per ticket seemed a little expensive. It was showing as sold out on some of the travel advice sites. But I really wanted to see Nero's palace. So, I found the Roma Experience Tours (RET) website and booked two tickets. I AM SO HAPPY I DID. RET was great at confirming the itinerary, the purchase, how to find them on the day, etc. as well as giving me little reminders in the lead up to the tour. Seems a simple thing, but this made me feel comfortable. The greatest thing of all was the guide (Ferdinando Badagliacca). He has his Phd in Archeology. He had done a dig within the Roman Forum. He shared an archeologist perspective on the Colosseum and the Forum, rich with anecdotes and very responsive to our questions. He, alone, was worth the ticket price. Well beyond it, in truth. My understanding is that RET use only these sort of experienced guides. The other thing worth noting is that the 100 Euros covers entry tickets (and line jumping!) for all three locations. Great value. And it was nice not to worry about these logistics. I feel obliged to come up with something that makes this review sound less fawning... There was one transition that felt a little odd. As mentioned previously, Ferdinando was brilliant and as a result we (group of 4) felt bonded to him. After the Colosseum and Forum, he advised us that he would be turning us over to a different tour guide at Nero's Palace. In the end, this woman was a world-class expert in Roman art and had been working on the site/giving tours of the Palace for a few years. So, the perfect guide. But there was a moment of surprise. A little expectation management at the start of the tour could have turned this surprise into a benefit. Bottom line. I know enough about Roman history to be dangerous. I was blown away with this tour. The guide(s) were excellent. This was the centrepiece to our long weekend. I highly recommend this tour.

We did the Colosseum tour led by Santi on 21st July. He was interesting, knowledgeable, entertaining, very personable, patient, a great ambassador for Rome and for your company. We highly recommend him as a tour guide.

We loved our visit to the Colosseum and Roman forum led by Khitska Nadiya. I used to live in Rome and have visited these sites on multiple prior occasions, both alone and with other guides, but there was still much for me to learn. It was great not having to worry about getting tickets and standing in line – all of this was taken care of ahead of time and we were also given special access to the top-most level of the Colosseum, which affords a stunning view down into the pits. She went above and beyond by frequently volunteering to take our photos, which we're now very happy to have.

<p>Incredible!!! We love this tour. I couldn't say enough about it. Highly recommend it. It's chilly in the palace as it's underground, you need layers.</p>

<p>The portion of the tour that was Nero's Place was great very interesting and informative. Unfortunately the tour guide for the Colosseum was not that great. Very, very slow paced. It started with no allowance for a bathroom break between Nero's Palace and the colosseum, she then took us to a couple of the displays inside the structure and gave us very little time in the outside area of the colosseum where we stood in one spot, not able to walk about or look at anything beyond the single spot she took us to. We mentioned that we wanted to leave the tour and she persuaded us to stay until we reached the Palatine where she would direct us to the restrooms. After reaching that area and another 15-20 minutes without regard to our discomfort we were forced to make it very clear that we could wait no longer and left the tour. I've had other tours of the colosseum and this was by far the least interesting, slowest paced of them all any tour actually.</p>

Excellent experience, I have been 13 times in Rome and had not been able to coordinate the visit to the Domus Aurea, allows you to appreciate the grandiosity of the time

We had booked this tour because we have been to Rome many times and several times to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. This time we wanted to see the Domus Aurea and then took the combined ticket. This tour is really worth every cent and highly recommended! Super guide! Our tour guide was extremely nice and could really answer any question.

Excelente tour guiada. Guias com muito conhecimento sobre os assuntos. Muito atenciosas e gentis. Excelente oportunidade de visita e aprendizado.