Roman Forum and Palatine Hill
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Historic Centre Of Rome, 1980); Parco Archeologico Del Colosseo, Ministero Della Cultura · Rome, Lazio
The civic heart of ancient Rome and the hill where it was founded, sold on one ticket and walked as one site: the Forum, a valley of temples, basilicas, triumphal arches and the Senate house where the Republic was run for five centuries, and above it the Palatine, where Augustus built his modest house and his successors their sprawling palaces, the word palace coming from the hill. Nothing here has a roof except the Curia, Santa Maria Antiqua with its early medieval frescoes and the painted rooms of the House of Augustus, so it is a place of columns, brick cores and broken marble that needs a plan or a guide to read. The Palatine's Farnese Gardens give the only shade and the best views, over the Forum one way and the Circus Maximus the other. It is included on every Colosseum ticket and most visitors treat it as the afterthought, which is why the Palatine at 9:00, entered from the Via di San Gregorio gate before the Colosseum crowd arrives, is the quietest hour anywhere in central Rome.
Largo della Salara Vecchia 5, Rome, Lazio, 00186, Italy
Opens 9:00 daily. Closes 19:15 from late March to 30 September, 18:30 in early October, 16:30 from late October to end of February; last entry one hour before. SUPER interiors from 9:30 to an hour before closing with their own weekly closures. Imperial Fora passage 9:00-18:00. Closed 25 December and 1 January.
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