Colosseum and Emperor Nero's Golden Palace tour
Explore two of Ancient Rome’s most jaw-dropping remains: the Domus Aurea and the Colosseum. After a 3-hour tour, you’ll finish your morning wandering the ruins of the world-famous Roman Forum and Palatine Hill.
Start your day in the Colosseum, where you’ll skip the entrance lines to walk inside the fascinating history of this iconic place. Your expert guide will tell you about the hunts, executions and gladiator fights that made the amphitheater famous.
Afterwards, put on a hard hat and head underground to discover the Domus Aurea, Nero’s ‘Golden Palace’. This titanic villa once spanned somewhere between 100 and 300 acres and was filled with enormous rooms with 30-foot ceilings glistening with marble, frescoes, semi-precious stones, and gold. Nero threw giant parties here, entertaining guests on his manmade lake, or raining rose petals and perfume down on them as they ate dinner in his revolving dining room.
After Nero’s suicide, Romans did their best to erase any memory of the much-hated emperor, which mean completely burying the Domus Aurea under Trajan’s baths. When rediscovered during the Renaissance, it became a mecca for artistic explorers like Raphael, Michelangelo, Pinturicchio and Casanova.
Your guide will take you to ancient rooms filled with frescoes and jaw-dropping Roman architecture. As a special treat, the excavators have added virtual reality displays that recreate the Golden Palace as it once was.
Back above ground, your guide will escort you to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. After ensuring that you skip the lines at the entrance, they will leave you to explore these world-class ruins in your own time.