Wonderful place to visit near the Colosseum but be prepared for stairs! Great view up on the terrace of Rome as a whole and many of the ancient ruins in the area. Must visit place.
I love visiting places I read about in school. So fun to walk in the footsteps of history! Beautifully preserved areas, and nice to see the old with the new
This is more a garden with wisely organized viewpoints rather than an open-air museum. Pity is that the prevailing part of the visitors have absolutely no clue what was here, what are the brick structures around and why they are visiting the Palatine themselves in first place. Massive guided tours in all possible languages just ruin single tourist intentions and impressions (but this true for entire Rome and especially in the summer). In fact this hill is the root from which Rome grew. The Lupercal was here, once we spent decent amount of time with kids lookin for it :) Romans prayed to No-named God exactly on this hill. Numa the king seated in this place. Nero could watch the fire of Rome from the today site-seeing spot! A tiny Palatine museum give you the perfect picture trough the elapsed ages what was Palatine and what it wasn’t. On-line Express ticket is a nice solution to enter (nevertheless express queue will be shorter than no-express ticket line) but it’s more expensive version is useless. The more expensive ticket give you the access to almost all significant site-museums but in a queue! This is in every spot on the hill; you go to Palatine museum and wait there, then you go to House of Julia and wait, then again.. Essentially, you will spend all your time in lines all around the hill. Very inconvenient, disappointing and frustrating. I can only advise to buy the cheapest ticket on-line just to enter and then just to walk around. This will certainly save you time and nerves. After all the site museums are less likely important to visit if you know everything already. So, better is to prepare yourself to the visit, to read some wikipedia at least..
Breathtaking overview of the Forum - must see! Particularly evocative when you see the crowds of tourists below, bringing a glimpse of what it must have been like back in the day.
We went to Palatine Hill as part of our Colosseum and Roman Forum ticket. We went to the Colosseum first, but it didn't start raining until after we left. I thought the rain might subside, so we decided to go to Palatine Hill and then Roman Forum instead of coming back later to visit these two historic sites.
Big mistake. It started to downpour and we didn't get to walk all around Palatine Hill like we wanted. We had to take shelter under an unnamed huge covered area that overlooked the Roman Forum from the right side (see picture). Lots of tour groups came through for refuge from the heavy rain, as did individuals and couples like ourselves. It was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit that day, which is about 10 degrees Celsius, with a 50 percent chance of rain. I was wearing a sundress because I didn't think it would actually rain. We stayed under that unnamed covered area for an hour and a half before the rain turned into light rain. My rain jacket was soaked through.
From what we could see, it is a beautiful and serene place. I enjoyed all the greenery and flowers.
The rain made it a memorable experience. I recommend saving this site for a clear day if possible so you can enjoy all of it at your own pace.
