Realistic, actionable, expert tips to escape the crowds in Rome and enjoy the best of the city + specific tips to avoid crows in Rome.
Rome is an exceptionally popular travel destination: millions of visitors reach the Eternal City every year attracted by the millennia of history of this unique city, its outstanding art, food and open air museum feel.
2024 has been a year of extraordinary tourism affluence, and words ‘unsustainable’ tourism‘, ‘overrun’ and ‘overtourism’ have become common when talking about the city.
2025 seemed to add an extra spanner in the works: on Jubilee year, millions of pilgrims were expected in the city.
2026 is a big question mark: will it be the quiet after the Jubilee or the opposite, the big year when all those who avoided the Jubilee crowds will make a crowd themselves?
These high numbers are a blessing for the city’s economy but a curse when it comes to the ability to enjoy the city, both as a visitors and as a local and the health of the city’s fragile and irreplaceable cultural heritage.
While always popular, Rome in the past was a place of wonder you could enjoy at a slow pace, strolling leisurely along its cobbled streets and casually entering churches, museums and even top tier attractions such as the Colosseum.
Those days are well and truly gone. While still a stunning and enjoyable city, to truly feel the essence and the best of Rome now you need some planning and a some inside tips to get away from the tick-the-box, fast- tourism the city suffers from.
So, is it still possible to visit Rome and not feel like you are a sardine in a can? Yes and No. Yes: it is possible to visit Rome and avoid the crowds even in the Jubilee year, if you have the right tips. No: it is not possible to avoid all crowds at all times and still see the major sites
This is why I am here today!
I am from Rome and I have all the tips you need to escape the crowds in Rome and have a great experience, without renouncing a visit to Rome’s most famous attractions. It is still possible to have an amazing time in Rome and feel the magic of the city and I am confident my tips will help!
One word of wisdom: no matter what you do, some exposure to mass tourism is inevitable in Rome especially if you are on a budget. So, when reading these tips, look at them as ways to mitigate the worst exposure to crowds and please do keep in mind that escaping crowds will inevitably come with some compromises over budget/ hours of visit / season of your trip.
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Don’t ‘do’ Rome – Give yourself a few days instead
One of the most common and most damaging planning mistakes I see from first time visitors to Rome is thinking the best way to escape the crowds in Rome is to stay in the city as little as possible.
This sadly is the worst possible approach, on many accounts.
The main problem with staying in Rome too short a time is that you will simply not have enough time to see anything but the most popular sites and those are the places where the crowds are.
Realistically, if you come to Rome, you want to see the Colosseum, Trevi, Spanish Steps, the Vatican and you will inevitably come up with an itinerary to get form one to the other in the most efficient way.
And you should! You should absolutely include Rome’s top attractions in your itinerary. It is not realistic to just skip them, you’d miss several of the main reasons to visit the city!
A whistle stop tour of the main landmarks, however is what most people do and this is where the problem lyes.
If you only plan sufficient time to hit the landmarks, you will find yourself in crowds during the visit and in crowds as you go from one to the next, very much like in the dreaded ‘Disneyworld on a busy day’ fashion.
The other problem with this approach as that it makes you concentrate on individual landmarks, instead of on what makes Rome special: the fact that the city developed over almost 3000 years and has been inhabited ever since and it is therefore, truly, like an open air museum.
A short stay that sees you hopping form one landmark to the other will make you ‘fly over’ the wonders that are in between the landmarks and make Rome unique. You may feel you have ‘done’ Rome but you haven’t: you have seen a handful of spots and missed the main element of the city: the all encompassing, immersive history of it.
If you stay a little longer, you’ll avoid both issues. (Yes, I know you are short on time, but keep reading!)
I know we are all short on time and staying longer in Rome means taking time off somewhere else. But please do consider carefully: what is the point in seeing something badly? Take a photo of a landmark you’ll then need to photoshop people out of? Say that you’ve been? As much as possible I recommend to try and focus on the planning of a pleasurable and meaningful experience for you, an experience that allows you to feel the beauty, make it your own, and keep it with you as a memory that goes beyond the photo snap and overwhelming crows.
With longer time in Rome you can take the longer route between places, get to experience the historic center, escape busy areas hopping into one of the many Rome churches, shops, restaurants and hidden courtyard, het aways from the crowds popping into a park and even just take a break back at your accommodation when you feel like it.
If you can, stay in Rome a minimum of 3 full days (excluding travel days) to have a chance to have a quieter, more normal, local, enjoyable and meaningful experience of the city.
If you need help planning your time, have a look at the following articles:
My recommended itinerary for 4 days in Rome
My recommended itinerary for 5 days in Rome
Avoid Easter and the busiest months
Rome is busy almost all year round but it gets at its busiest at specific times, which many not be those you expect.
The worst time to come to Rome for crowds is Easter. The Easter break brings to Rome throngs of people, partially for religious reasons, partially for the more practical element of school closures in many countries.
If planning a trip to Rome in spring, try as much as possible to avoid Easter weekend and the week coming up it especially.
Other exceptionally busy months in Rome are May, June, September, October (October is insanely busy!) and the week between Christmas and the 6th go January, aka the Christmas holiday.
For a chance of lower crowds, the best time to come to Rome are the months of November, January, February/ early March (with the exception of Valentine’s weekend).
Read our guides, about:
All you need to know about visiting Rome in November
All you need to know about visiting Rome in January
All you need to know about visiting Rome in February
All you need to know about visiting Rome in March
Know where and when Jubilee events are
The Jubilee is an event of great meaning for Catholics and a year during which many large events take place. These large events attract individual visitors but most of all they attract the big groups that have come from all over the world specifically for religious and worshipping reasons.
These groups won’t be competing with your for space in golf cart tours of cooking classes and for the most part will not even compete with you for space in hotels, since they come for non tourism reasons and often as part of pilgrimage group tours.
However, they WILL BE at all major events so if you are hoping to see the Vatican or the main basilicas without encountering them, you need to know when the events area and plan around them.
You can find the official Jubilee schedule on the official site here.
Stay out of the center
Traditionally, my advice about the best area to stay in Rome was to stay in the Pantheon /Navona area, a stunning, convenient and well served central location, convenient to everywhere and everything.
This advice still stands; however, there is no chance of escaping the crowds here as the area is so sought after, convenient and beautiful, it is the first choice of pretty much all visitors who an afford a room here.
However, you don’t need to stay in the center to enjoy Rome and actually, staying out of it comes with a huge array of upsides! If you stay out of the center, you get:
Better priced accommodation, often more spacious and with higher specs than an equally priced one in the center
Better food options, as local restaurants cater to Romans more than tourists. While the average quality of food in Rome city enter is high, if you want the aortal real deal, local neighbourhoods here the place to go!
Quiet, relaxing cafes and parks to recharge after sightseeing.
The chance to experience the actual city of Rome in all its local splendor, as opposed to only the historic center. There is a lot more to Rome the the centre, the architecture of some of the other neighbourhood is spectacular and they have plenty to offer!
Staying away from the center comes with the potential need to use public transport but if you have more time in Rome (see tip 1) this will not eat much into your time and the extra hassle will be easily compensated by all the upsides of an out of the center location.
You can find here >> my selection of 7 quiet neighbourhoods in Rome to stay away from the crowds.
Go exploring very early in the morning
I know that getting up early on vacation is the last thing many of us want to do but Rome is stunning and blissfully quiet early in the morning.
If you get out and explore at dawn (wait for daylight to break), when cafes open and only early morning workers and the motivated few are out, you are rewarded with empty piazzas, stunning photo ops, a beautiful lights and you’ll feel that magic of Rome over tourism has now made to hard to feel.
Invest in before-opening time / evening tours (high budget)
Some attractions such as the Vatican Museums offer the option of out of hours tours, that let you get into the museums before everyone else, effectively beating to it day trippers, night owls and anyone who don’t like or cannot get up before dawn.
These tours are expensive and they only allow a limited number of people in but are worth their weight in gold.
The best ones I know are:
Express early morning Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum Express Tour This is an EXCELLENT tour of the Vatican Museum focusing on the museum top attractions and the Sistine Chapel and that allows you to enter before the museums open to the general public. The early entrance means you can escape the worst of the crowds and since the tours is relatively short, you’ll be able to get away from the area before the masses arrive.
Vatican Museum late afternoon Evening Tour This is another great tour that makes the most of the other quieter time at the Vatican: late afternoons. The tour starts as the crowds start to dwindle and day trippers leave so while you’re not entirely alone in the Vatican, you only find a fraction of the visitors you get in the central hours of the morning, which is when most people are there.
Alone in the sistine Chapel tour – This tour comes at a very high price point but is your chance to truly see the Sistine Chapel with almost no one else there. The tour is only offered on selected dates and is available via LivTours thanks to a long standing relationship they have with the Vatican, which meant they get privileged access. If budget allows, this is a great tour to get.
Seek tickets for limited access areas
The other way to escape crowds in Rome is to see if some areas have special restrictions to some areas and try secure tickets for those. The Colosseum for instance has a fantastic top tier called ‘attic’ which only allows a handful of people in at any given time.
Securing these tickets is difficult but doable and worth the time and effort. You can read here >>> my guide to securing tickets from the Colosseum website (budget friendly!)
Don’t search for ‘the best’ (Let me explain this!)
When we travel or do anything really, we want to make sure we get the best: the best deal, the best tour, the best restaurant, the best time… but let’s be honest here: a lot of the stuff presented on the web as ‘best’ is not best at all.
Are you telling me that the influencer who’s been three days in Rome has tried all the restaurants and all the hotels and all the tours to tell you what is best? Of course not, at most they are reselling you tips from others to places they liked (which is a very different thing from saying those places are ‘best’).
There is only a handful of locals who can genuinely give an informed opinion on what’s best based on EXTENSIVE and constant research – me, for instance! I am from Rome and I made it my job is literally exploring the city and trying many things as possible to select the best ones and recommend them to you, it’s what I do, my passion, mission and full time job!
So, when you are searching for something, don’t just look at lists of ‘best’ things. Look for local experts and follow their advice: you’ll stay away from where everyone goes, spend less and you’ll have a better experience.
You can find here:
This blog’s sections about where to eat in Rome
This blog’s sections about where to stay
Mix high profile attractions with lesser known places
The average visitors sees a handful of spots in Rome, usually a variation of the list Colosseum – Vatican – Trevi – Spanish Steps list, with the Pantheon thrown in for good measure.
These are wonderful places but what about the rest? Even without going too niche, there are stunning places in Rome tourists hardly go to and they are wonderful:
Ostia Antica, an archeological site so beautiful and meaningful to rival Pompeii
Diocletian’s Baths, colossal ancient thermal baths in Rome city centre, now a stunning archaeological site
Centrale Montemartini, an incredible museum with mosaics and ancient statues like no other.
These are many more are lesser known places that are spectacular, significant and great places to escape the crowds in Rome even at the busiest of times!
Enjoy Rome’s parks
Rome has fabulous parks that are both oasis to escape the crowds and attractions in themselves.
Among the many, enjoyable parks are Villa Borghese Gardens, where you find a beautiful pond, several museums, the zoo, an open air cinema and fabulous viewpoints over the city; Villa Torlonia, with beautiful museums and historic buildings including theRedenlty renovated Moorish Greenhouse and Mussolini’s bunker; Parco degli Acquedotti, a large, wild park overlooked by the ruins of stunning, huge Ancient Rome aqueducts.
Skip the line on a budget with this tip!
Tips to help you escape the crowds in Rome wouldn’t be complete without a mention of lines and how to avoid them. On this point, I have good news!
ALL main ticketed attractions in Rome now have skip the line tickets – attractions such as Colosseum Vatican Museum Pantheon, Borghese Gallery have timed entrance tickets and this means you go straight to the door and get it.
The dreaded lines are a the ticket office but with the web now there is no reason to go there, you can just buy online and avoid the queue, ‘skip the line’ is still used as an expression but it is obsolete.
With timed tickets, the only lines you have are for security and those cannot be skipped.
Find here: how to buy tickets to the Colosseum
How to buy tickets to the Vatican Museums
How to buy tickets to the Borghese Gallery
Hoe to buy tickets to the Pantheon
I hope these quick tips helps you plan your trip and gave you hope that it is indeed possible to avoid the crowds and still have a wonderful stay! Safe travels!
How to escape the crowds in Rome – pin this!
