For me, it’s such a weird sense of self being in a city where modern life has seamlessly blended with ancient history. The mix of historical sites and contemporary structure juxtaposed against one another on street level is completely fascinating. As a traveller,  obviously you’d notice how otherworldly it is to be walking down a street and coming across ruins in an intersection. Looking around though, this is life in Rome and I felt like people had stopped seeing the ruins for the cafes if you will.

The city isn’t as big as you’d imagine, and we walked it’s limits rather than catching any cabs here. A good map and a sense of curiosity brought us to some beautiful finds here. Naturally, it’s easy to find The Colosseum. The massive structure rising from the horizon surrounded by its fellow ancient ruins. And while the city wasn’t as big as I expected, The Colosseum definitely was.

You can sense the majesty that once ruled these parts in The Colosseum’s scale. Huge walls circling the inner sanctum and it’s maze-like chambers. We had bought tickets online for entry beforehand, and this was once again our time saver in Italy. The queues to get in were a little crazy, or rather a LOT crazy. We got to skip the majority of this and headed into the interior of this massive structure.

What struck me was how structured the columns and amphitheatre were. For a time when labourers were using route force and rudimentary tools, The Colosseum is remarkably neat in its finishings. The weather was acting rather testy while we were around, but it became a game in the end, hiding in the corners, under arches and squishing into the souvenir stores to avoid getting soaked.

Like most sites in Rome, you can hire a headset and hear all about the place, but I absolutely loved reading out the bits and pieces to P while we walked around here from our guidebook on the city. There were plenty spots to sit and watch the other tourists meander about the sections and really get some great people watching in. There are tons of different nationalities, ages and interesting folk to fill the time here.

As a recap, here are my top tips for your visit to The Colosseum:

• Book tickets beforehand! I can’t stress this enough!
• Get a small, compact guidebook to take along
• Set aside two to three hours for your trip here
• Check out the souvenir stores! They have some interesting, different things
• Be friendly, this is actually an awesome place to meet like-minded travellers!

There are quite a few websites that sell tickets for attractions in Italy, and quite a few spots sell tickets directly, but we booked our tickets through Tickitaly.com. A great service with absolutely no hassles whatsoever, and you can add a few different tickets to your basket and purchase them all at once!