Tourbus, Rome

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Only E20 for one day ticket (24 hour validity) of transportation around the sights of Rome. The Roma 110 open is a Tourist line open top deck trambus that circles the city and has 12 stops that are ideal for most major sites in Rome. The stops are quick except at Termini which is the train station but then it is only a short time till you are on your way. The Route Map will show where the bus goes and stops. The stops are: Termini, Coliseum, Circus Maximus, Mouth of Truth, Piazza Venezia, St. Peter, Ara Pacis, Trevi Fountain, Villa Borghese, Barberini, and back to Termini. Every ten minutes in high season, 20 minutes in off season, there is a 110 open at each stop.

You can get on and off to visit sites such as the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, etc. Start early in the morning and hop on and off at the stops you wish to visit. A full audio headset in 8 languages is included to listen to what the 110 is either going by or the next stop. Great for beginners to see the sights and great for those who can't walk for long distances. The 110 sign is up at the locations to help you wait for the next bright red trambus and you pay as you get on, no matter which stop. Have fun! Take the Roma Trambus 110 Open.

DON'T DO IT!!! Although the marketing concept is great, in actuality these tours are miserable and a complete waste of your time. There are several companies that provide these open-top city tours, they are all basically the same concept and about the same price. I paid 26 Euros each for two of us, or a total of 52 Euros, for a tour that made 10 stops around the city. At each stop, the bus waits for about 10 minutes. You can jump off for a very quick look around and a few photos, or you can stay off and wait for the next bus. Most people never leave the bus at all because you find out very quickly that the line to get back on can frequently be an hour or more! If you get off at each of the 10 stops with the idea of catching the next bus that will be along in about 30 minutes, you have a surprise coming. You will have to wait in line for the second or third bus before returning to the tour route. Basically, there isn't enough hours in the day to complete the tour if you hop off and hop back on more than a couple of times. While on the bus, it is difficult or impossible to take photos. Our bus had a safety rail right at eye level making it impossible to take a photo unless standing. Taking a clear photo while standing in a moving bus is nearly as impossible. There is a recorded tour narration in at least four languages. But, the recorded narration is seldom in sync with the actual location of the bus. On our tour, the recording malfunctioned and had to be reset. The beginning of the tour started playing over about halfway through the tour and continued to play incorrectly for another 15 minutes until the operator resynced the recording. With all the maintenance down-time during the tour, and the out of sync repeat narration, about a third of our tour had no proper narration at all. Generally, these tours are a nothing but a waste of time and money.

Alternative: My suggestion, and what we definitely did on every other day we were in Rome, is simply take taxis wherever you wish to go. A taxi across the entire city never cost me more than 12 Euros for the two of us. Short taxi hops, like from one tour bus stop to the next, would only cost 5 or 6 Euros maximum. For the 52 Euros I spent on a miserable 2-hour bus tour, with waits in lines that exceeded the actual tour length, and not having the real chance to actually get off and see everything we wanted, we could have spent the same money and gone to all 10 stops by taxi without waiting in line once for transportation and spent a comfortable amount of sightseeing time at each location. The only thing missing is the recorded narration, which was more annoying than helpful anyway. I bought Rick Steves' "Rome" for 2011 guide book and had more useful information at my fingertips than would be possible with a recording. Also, every taxi driver we met, with one exception (which I describe in another tip), was friendly and helpful. They answered all our questions and were happy to volunteer all the knowledge they had about every place we went.

Conclusion, DO NOT take the hop-on hop-off open-top bus tours. Just take a taxi. You can skip the lines for the busses and have the flexibility to go anywhere you want, whenever you want, for the same price or less than the bus.

We bought tickets for the 110 open top sightseeing buses, which were valid for unlimited travel on that route on the date purchased. Along with the ticket we were provided with a set of headphones that we could plug in at any seat on the bus to hear a commentary, in our choice of language, on what could be seen from the bus and a city map showing the route the bus took through the city’s streets, where it stopped to pick up passengers and the location of places of interest.

We were told that there would be diversions on the route later that day due to road closures so we decided to travel the full route first to make sure we had seen everything before parts of the route became unavailable. This really helped us to get a feel for the layout of the city and to decide what we wanted to see later. For my tastes the commentary was a little sparse but I suppose many people prefer just to look at the view from the bus and might find constant commentary distracting.

We did the same route again on the last bus that went round that day, so we could see all the beautiful buildings lit up after dark and during the day, we used it to travel between all the places we wanted to visit, including the Castel Sant Angelo, the Coliseum and the Trevi Fountain. Although it was very cold the day we used it, there was such a good view from the top that we didn’t mind sitting outside on the top deck and from here it was lovely to be able to see some of the decorative features on the upper floors of many of Rome’s buildings and also over the river and its many interesting bridges.

Compared to the ordinary bus services, the stops are rather far apart, so you can end up with quite a walk if you want to see something which isn’t right by a stop but the map they provide at least makes the route clear. The cost for the one day ticket was 13 Euros and the full route covered eleven stops. There is a map available on the website listed, which shows the route and stops.

We used Green Line Tours, a shuttle bus around the city, which we could hop on and off, tickets were £14 and valid for a 24 hour period. The office is located a few minutes walk from the Termini Railway Station in Rome, and just off via Cavour.

Frequent departures from 9:30am - 6:30pm

Itinerary:
The Shuttle tour will stop near the following places of interest. The letter in brackets refers to the relevant bus stop:

Terminal Via Farini 5A (A)
Fontana di Trevi / Piazza Spagna Via del Traforo 132 (B)
Via Veneto / Via Vittorio Veneto 27 (C)
Villa Borghese / Piazza delle Canestre (D)
Vaticano / Via della Conciliazione 4 (E)
Piazza Navona / Pantheon / Corso Vittorio Emanuele 178 (F)
Piazza Venezia / Piazza Venezia 3 (G)
Bocca delle Verità/Circo Massimo / Via della Greca 11 (H)
Colosseo Via San Gregorio 30 (I)

Although I don’t like hop on hop off buses they are very useful when you first visit a city and want to check the highlights before you return back to the ones you want to check anyway. Usually they have audio narration that will give you some history so to know what is this impressive site that you’re passing by.

In Rome there different companies with different buses. Most of them (as usual) they have tickets that are valid for 24 hours so you can hop on hop off as much as you want in any of the stops. The only problem is that they usually operate only for some hours during the day (normally from 9.00 until 21.00)

City Sightseeing (you probably already know them from other big cities) runs 2 different routes (your ticket is valid on both)

A lot of people prefer bus 110, a double decker bus (prefer the open version for better view of the sites so you can also take pictures). The start from termini station and they operate 9.00-23.30 through Colosseum, Boca della Verita, piazza Venezia, piazza Navona, Vatican etc The 24h ticket costs €20 (there’s 5% discount if you buy it online). They say there’s a bus every 20’ (10’ during high season)

Check also Archeobus (by the same company that operates bus 110). This bus takes you along the Appica Antica. It departs from Termini in the morning (8.30-9.00-9.30 and 10.00) and goes through the centre of Rome along the park of Via Appia Antica. The ride lasts 90’, The ticket costs €13 or you can buy the combo with bus 110 that costs €30

Open-top hop-on, hop-off bus with ear-canal audio.

Route: Stop 1 is at Termini, but we boarded at stop 2 Piazza Venezia for stop 3 Colosseo, stop 4 Terme di Caracalla, stop 5 Porta di San Sebastiano, stop 6 Parco Regionale Appia Antica, stop 7 Valle della Caffarella, stop 8 Catacombe di San Callisto, stop 9 Catacombe di San Sebastiano, stop 10 Cecilia Metella, stop 11 Sant'Urbano, stop 12 Capo di Bove, stop 13 Stadio delle Terme, and stop 14 Bocca della Verità.

Price: € 10,00 per person over 24hrs. Tickets can be bought online, at the stop or on the bus. We bought our ticket from a roving salesman hovering near the stop.

The good: Easy way to visit the lesser-known attractions Rome has to offer, such as the massive Baths of Caracalla, the many sites along the Appian Way, the Catacombs, and the Mouth of Truth inside the portico of the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

The bad: The quality of the ear-canal audio that narrates information about the attractions en route is rather poor and crackly. Almost better just to sit back, relax and enjoy the views.

We actually took our Rome excursion thru NCL Jade - our cruise ship. There was a tour bus (hop on hop off bus) available in Rome and normally we would recommend this as a great alternative to seeing a city in a short time.

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My oldest daughter told me that I could not see Rome unless I could walk. I can't walk for any distance so I viewed the coming visit to Rome with some anxiety. All of the ship tours involved considerable walking. The alternative would have been either to take the train to Rome and walk (which would be hard for me) take a taxi (expensive), or to book an individual car from the cruise ship which would have been $750.00 for just a HALF day. On a tip from a fellow VTer, we hired Sandro Pagnotta of RomaLimo.

We had a wonderful tour of Rome with Sandro Pagnotta, VP. & C.O.O of RomaLimo. We had the car for the whole day - the two of us, and he took us to see the sights we were interested in (Sistine Chapel (where he obtained a guide for us), Trevi Fountain and the Coliseum) and many sights that we would not have thought of asking to see like Circus Maximus, Spanish Steps, the Knights of Malta keyhole, the city gate and the Basilica of St. Paul Fuori le Mura. The Mercedes that we used could go down the narrow streets and easily get around where a normal sightseeing bus could not go. Sandro spoke excellent English and was charming and helpful.

Sandro picked us up at the cruise ship dock in Civitavecchia at 8, and by 8:15 we were driving out of the port gate toward the Vatican. We were back at the boat by 4:00.

The day cost us $675, and paying in advance I could pay in dollars instead of Euros. I paid extra for the Vatican guide, entrance to the Vatican and Coliseum, for lunch and tips.

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