Colosseum Arena, Forum & Palatine Hill Tour with Optional Underground

the tour tricked us by showing that underground of colosseum is an "optional" item. we really wanted to see the underground part and every tour of the underground was pretty much sold out except for this tour. we paid the extra money since this was the only available one (others excluded underground and were much cheaper). anyways, the day of the tour came and we found out the tour does not include the underground. when we spoke with the office they told us it was "optional" and during the booking we should have paid attention that it was not included in the description. this is just false advertisement. they insisted that there was an option to choose underground but i am fairly sure there wasn't anything to select. they danced around the term "optional" quite a bit and they opened up a laminated screen shot of the options we could have booked to show us we are wrong. in general if a business has a ready-to-go response for something, be sure that it is a scam they have run before.

The actual tour arrangements and the colosseum were fine, however we booked an English speaking small group tour. We booked an English-speaking tour guide, as we felt it was important that we could clearly understand the information being provided throughout the tour. Our guide (Carmen) was Italian and was able to converse in English, and she was clearly knowledgeable and enthusiastic. However, unfortunately, her accent was very very strong and some of the pronunciation and vocabulary were impossible for us to understand. We struggled to follow much of what she was saying and felt that we missed a significant amount of the information during the tour. We appreciate that English is not her first language and do not wish to criticise her personally. However, we specifically booked an English-speaking guide and expected to be able to understand the commentary clearly, this was not the case and it significantly affected our experience therefore it was a complete waste of money

I absolutely loved this small group tour with Lucy. We had 5 people in our group total and Lucy was a very knowledgeable guide. She has academic experience studying the Colosseum and can answer even the weirdest questions. It was really unique getting to see the underground of the massive monument and this was honestly the part where I just wish there was more. Groups get limited time down there, wish I think is just a requirement of the Colosseum and not specific to a tour. Honestly, doing these historic spaces with a guide allows you to learn so much more and not miss the key spots.