Hop-on hop-off Rome: which bus, and for how many hours

Hop on hop off Rome: the ticket you buy for the city day, not the week

Hop on hop off Rome tickets are sold by the hour, and a week built around day trips is exactly where that goes wrong. A 72-hour pass looks like value on the Monday you arrive; by the time you have spent Tuesday in Pompeii and Wednesday in Tivoli, you have paid for two days of a bus you never saw. The operators know this, which is why every one of them also sells a one-day or 24-hour ticket, and why the cheapest of those (€15 at the time of checking) is the right default for this site's readers.

The other thing to know before the comparison: none of the buses currently stops at the Colosseum. City Sightseeing and I Love Rome both list the Colosseo stop as suspended until further notice, so the most photographed hop-off in Rome is now a Metro B ride. City Sightseeing's own route description still runs past the Imperial Fora, the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus; the buses just do not let you off at the amphitheatre.

Why it pairs with a day-trip week

Used properly, the hop-on bus is the orientation tool for the first city day and the tired-legs tool for the last one. The full loop takes about 1 h 30 on City Sightseeing's route and up to two hours on the three-route networks in afternoon traffic; ridden in the morning from Termini, it shows you where the Vatican, Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain and the Forum sit relative to each other, which makes the walking days and the metro connections to the day trips obvious.

I Love Rome starts its validity at the first stamping, and City Sightseeing sells a "1 day" ticket alongside its 24-hour one, according to their sites. Buy the day before, stamp on the morning you ride. If your plan has three city days spread across a week, three one-day tickets on the cheapest platform come to about the same as one 72-hour pass and lose nothing when a trip lands in between.

The stops that matter for a day-trip week are the terminals. City Sightseeing's are at Via Marsala 7 and Piazza dei Cinquecento 67, both on the Termini forecourt where the regional trains to Tivoli, Frascati and Castel Gandolfo and the Leonardo Express leave, and I Love Rome and Green Line also load at Termini; the City Sightseeing Vatican stop and the Lungotevere Tor di Nona terminal put you within a walk of Roma San Pietro station, which is where the Civitavecchia trains stop. So a hop-on morning can end at the station your afternoon train leaves from, without a metro connection in between.

Against public transport the maths is honest. An ATAC BIT ticket is €1.50 for 100 minutes on metro, bus and tram, and the Roma 24h public-transport ticket is €8.50, according to atac.roma.it; a day of unlimited metro and city buses therefore costs less than half of a three-route hop-on day. The bus wins on the top deck and the commentary, not on getting anywhere. For getting to Ostia Antica, Tivoli or the Castelli you will be on the metro, the Metromare, a Cotral bus or a regional train regardless.

What to book and when

Which operator. Four companies, three fleets. City Sightseeing Rome (the red buses, run by Sightseeing Experience of Tuscany) sells an "integrated" ticket also valid on the ORP Omnia yellow buses, from €18 direct and €15–18 on the platforms. Big Bus runs one Red Route with seven stops from 09:00 to 19:00 every 9 minutes; fewer places, more buses. I Love Rome, the Gray Line brand of Carrani Tours, runs from Termini stop 1 with audio in 12 languages and a 4-hour half-day ticket. Green Line Tours has three routes and 15 stops with audio in 16 languages, and supplies the three-route product that leads this page on GetYourGuide, where it costs €19.80 against €28 for the daily ticket direct.

When to buy. The day before, on whichever platform is cheapest for that operator; the tables below are live and the same bus is often €3–10 apart between GetYourGuide, Tiqets and Headout. Never buy a 48- or 72-hour ticket until you have fixed which days are day trips. Refund terms differ: I Love Rome direct refunds up to 24 hours before, City Sightseeing's product page states free cancellation until 24 hours before, and the platforms show their own window at checkout.

When not to buy at all. If your only city day starts at 14:00 because the morning was Ostia, a hop-on ticket buys you one loop and one hop. The golf cart tours at €39 for two hours cover more of the centre in that window, and a night walk costs less than the night bus.

City Sightseeing and the three-route ticket compared

The main comparison group holds the cheapest tickets in Rome. Headout's City Sightseeing 24-hour ticket was €15 at the time of checking, GetYourGuide's €15.30, and the three-route Green Line product €19.80 with more than 19,000 reviews. Prices per person, checked regularly.

Big Bus compared

Same product, two platforms, a €9 gap; the GetYourGuide listing is usually the one to take.

Night buses

Night tours are a single 1 h–1 h 30 loop of lit monuments starting around 20:00, which is precisely when the Pompeii and Tuscany coaches are dropping people back near Termini and Piazza del Popolo. No hopping off, so the sensible plan is dinner first and the later departure where the listing offers one.

The Tiber boat

The hop-on boat is a €23 ticket on all three platforms. It is slow, the river is below street level so the views are of embankments and bridges, and it is a pleasant hour on a hot afternoon rather than a transport system. Ratings on our feed sit between 3.5 and 4.4, which tells you what to expect.

I Love Rome, Green Line and the out-of-town buses

The other two city fleets are sold on Tiqets and Headout rather than GetYourGuide, which is why they sit outside the main table. Alongside them are two products that carry the hop-on name out of Rome: the Castelli Romani hop-on tour at €155, a guided day with stops rather than a bus service, and the Civitavecchia port transfer with a Rome bus day for cruise passengers.

Tiqets

I Love Rome: Hop-on Hop-off Panoramic Bus Tour

★ 4.2 (513 reviews)

Tiqets09:00

Green Line Tours Rome: Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tour

★ 3.9 (111 reviews)

Headout1 h 30 min

Castel Gandolfo Palace & Secret Garden Tickets

★ 4.4 (1,206 reviews)

GetYourGuide24 h

From Civitavecchia: Hop-On Hop-Off Rome Tour & Bus Transfer

★ 4.1 (332 reviews)✓ Free cancellation

Who runs the buses

Three of the four hop-on brands are covered in our operator reviews. I Love Rome is the consumer brand of Carrani Tours, the coach operator founded in 1925 and Gray Line's exclusive partner for the city; its office at Via Solferino opens daily from 06:30, which is useful when a voucher goes wrong before an early departure. Green Line Tours has run hop-on buses since 2006 and is the supplier behind the three-route GetYourGuide product. City Sightseeing Rome is operated by Sightseeing Experience s.r.l. of Cavriglia in Tuscany, whose site also lists Florence, Milan and Naples among its destinations. For the platform side, the Tiqets listings for I Love Rome and Green Line are covered in our Tiqets review.

The verdict for a day-trip week

Buy a one-day or 24-hour hop on hop off Rome ticket for your first city day, ride the full loop before lunch, and hop off twice in the afternoon; do not buy anything longer until the day-trip days are fixed. Skip the Colosseum stop, because there is none. If a coach brings you back at 20:00 with energy to spare, the night bus is the seated way to see the monuments lit. The three-route ticket below is the widest single-day coverage on the feed and the one most readers of this site end up with.