THE 10 CLOSEST Hotels to Palatine Hill

The ruins are amazing and my only regret is we didn’t spend more time there! We took a tour of the ruins three years ago and felt confident we could get through with our own knowledge and Wikipedia . In my opinion this area has the least amount of signs out of any other place in the entire city! We spent loads of time on google and should have booked a tour once again. This will be my fourth time to Italy and my third time in Rome, next time I will probably skip the coliseum and spend the whole day at Palentine hill and in the forum. I would recommend if you are trying to save money to print pictures of the drawing and renderings and to at least download the Rick Steve’s guide! Additionally it being in November we did get the rare opportunity to experience the emergency evacuation drill! We also experienced earlier in the day at the coliseum! So every one was evacuated it took about a half hour because they need to re scan your tickets unlike the coliseum where they just let everyone back in! Therefore the staff that day was very angry and closed a lot of the hill early! We where ushered out of the hill 20 minutes before closing and ushered out of the back areas saying they were closed even though there was no signage and later other people were walking along and taking pictures like normal! Besides the staff members it was a wonderful experience and still and too thing to do in Rome that I look forward to every time!

As you find in many places in Rome, Palatine Hill is rife with history and entrancing architecture. This beautiful expanse is home to a wide variety of buildings and ruins, known as one of the most ancient areas you will find in the whole city. Palatine Hill is just beside the Colosseum, bringing with it the long queues that trickle in and out of the famed building each day. These long, still lines might lead you to decide to give Palatine Hill a miss (as we initially did) however there are several quieter entrances that lead you around to the same exact spots! So don’t be too deterred by the long queues if you also happen to end up at the dishearteningly long one, as we had. From the entrance we began at, we walked through areas of lush greenery with quiet areas of shade to sit in and enjoy the sun. Following the pathways before us, we came upon the forum and wandered down through the ruins, providing a gorgeous walk which showed off the architectural history that resides there. These buildings are found beside collections of flowers and trees, providing photo opportunities at every turn. One such photo opportunity is a view towards the Colosseum that provides a tall, wide view of the side of the impressive structure, one which you otherwise couldn’t get when stood so close to the building down on the ground. Palatine Hill was a wonderful walk to do on the sunny day that we were fortunate enough to experience it on and I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys photography, nature or a bit of Roman history.

This is worth getting the "super" tickets that allow you to see the special sites on the hill, such as the Palatine museum, the house of Augustus and Flavia, Romulus' cabin, etc. Without such tickets you can still stroll around the ruins, but you will miss the special places and archeological treasures that were found at this location, dating back to the very foundation of Rome. We recommend dedicating a whole morning or afternoon specifically to the Palatine. Do not combine it with a visit to the Colosseum or the Roman Forum on the same day, for you will probably see evryting superficially and get tired in the process.

About 3 weeks before our visit to Rome, we had booked through the homepage of the Colosseo combo ticket for the Colosseum, Forum Romanum and Palatine, in June 2024 for 17,-€. After spending almost 2 1/2 hours at the Colosseum in the morning, we were on the road for another 3 hours at noon. Super impressive to walk around among these ancient ruins.

Every year I return to Rome since I was a child and every year I revisit places or museums seen many years before. This year I visited the Colosseum, the Forum and the Palatine Hill accompanied also by my niece and then Moses with the tomb of Julius the second restored and again St. Peter with Bernini's altar restored to its former glory. Again the eyes are filled with so much beauty

Walking through the Palatine Hill, the Imperial Forum and the Roman Forum (which can be visited with a single ticket), we are probably in one of the most beautiful places in the world. However, there are no official guided tours (perhaps because a tour should last a full day). The routes are quite chaotic, especially on the Palatine Hill. Super Experiences (included in some ticket categories) are likely to go unnoticed, sometimes even depending on the direction you take (an example for everyone, the House of Livia is well indicated if you come from the Neronian Cryptoporticus, but it is not indicated at all if you go down the other side). Signs are sometimes exhaustive, other times not. Surely you should arrive already prepared and with a plan in mind, but most visitors risk missing out on attractions or having to double the route to see them (it happened to me with the Domus Tiberiana, which I visited going up the Palatine after having already descended. And I was able to guess almost by accident the path to the Forum of Trajan when I was now leaving the park after turning a couple of hours for the Roman Forum. In short, we could certainly do more to improve the use of the Park. As a Visiting Time Recommendation to provide a full day, there is so much to see, and the interior museums also deserve attention.

We had opted for the 48 hour full experience which included Palatine Hill although we chose in the end to cover all three sites in the one day. Palatine Hill again is so full of history to easy to imagine Romulus and Remus racibg through this hilltop area. It is however impossible not to gaze over ancient and modern Rome from this hilltop

The Roman Forum and the Palettein merge, the Palettein is one of the hills so a climb. I had booked a ticket through coopculture.it, but you will get a voucher and therefore have to pick up the real ticket. You do that in a tourist office near Piazza Venezia, just look. Beforehand, there is an introductory video of less than half an hour on how it works, with animation of how it must have been. Then you walk in 5 minutes to the entrance of the forum on Via dei Fori Imperiali. I believe there are 2 other entrances that are much less crowded, but they are further walking. At the entrance is bag control. Some knowledge of history is useful here, as is empathy. They're ruins, so don't expect complete buildings. There are many signs with explanations, and you can also book a guided tour of course. The signage is not ideal, but part of the fun for me was just to wander around (wear good shoes). At some points it is very busy with groups, but they certainly do not get everywhere, so you can avoid them. After all, it is a very large area! There are vending machines with bottles of drinks and sweets here and there, there is also a cafe with toilets only at the main entrance. Very interesting and fun to do, but I would not go here with uninterested fellow travelers / children.

On the Palatine Hill are preserved the remains of Iron Age settlements. But the history of Rome includes the Palatine in all ages. It soon became the aristocratic settlement. Augustus symbolically chose the hill as his home Later the hill became the seat of the imperial palaces: the Domus Tiberiana, the Domus Transitoria and then the Domus Aurea, and finally the Domus Flavia. In the Renaissance, the Palatine became the property of aristocratic families who planted villas, vineyards and gardens there. Today a very pleasant archaeological site to visit, in particular, as in my case, if you do not want to queue for three hours to visit the Colosseum which is three hundred meters away.

In the last 10 years I think I have visited the Palatine Hill 4 times and there was always something new to see that I had previously missed. Here was the center of the Roman Empire (along with the adjacent forum). If you want to save yourself the huge queues to enter, it is best to buy a ticket in advance and enter through the entrance on Via Celio (Biglietteria Palatino)