← Front page

Untold Italy · Friday, September 11, 2026

Booking Tickets and Guides in Italy: Advance Planning is Key

Katie Clark and Corinna Cook emphasize the critical need to book tickets for major attractions and private guides well in advance of travel to Italy. They recount past difficulties in securing tickets, especially for sites like the Colosseum and the Vasari Corridor, and advise using official websites or authorized third-party vendors. They also note that private guides and drivers are often booked out months ahead.

personKatie ClarkpersonCorinna Cook

The tape

4 quotes
You need to book them in advance these days and you can do that online. You can book it through. In our articles, we always, always, always give the official site because some people are very dedicated to using the official site.
Katie Clark
Well, I will say 2023 nearly completely derailed me. So the Coliseum, so under the Coliseum group, there's all kinds of ticketing in Rome that happens, and they were changing from co-op culture to Parco Coliseo for the And so there was a year where everything went absolutely haywire and it was so hard to get tickets and you're having to stay up in the middle of the night because they were releasing them.
Corinna Cook
So you really have to factor that in and know it, whatever it is that you're going to. And I would say you also have to book well in advance for some of these places.
Corinna Cook
So things like booking guides and drivers, you've got to get those bookings in well in advance. Like as soon as you've got your dates lined up, if you're booking private guides, get them booked because they all get booked out.
Corinna Cook
Heard on Untold Italy — “341. First-Timer's Guide to Italy - Essential Travel Tips [From the Vault], published Friday, September 11, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
Transcribed via publisher transcript · $0.00