Trajan’s Market Tickets

Official City Card

Roma Pass

Valid 2 – 3 days

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Highlights

• The upper terrace puts you right above Trajan’s Column, the best spot in Rome for reading its spiral of carved battle scenes
• Walk Via Biberatica, the most complete ancient street left in the city, and wander market rooms you’ll often have almost to yourself
• Booking online is easy and locks in your day, or the whole site is free if it’s one of your first two Roma Pass stops

Tickets & Prices

There’s really only one thing to decide here, and it’s whether to book at all. A single ticket covers both the excavated market and the Museum of the Imperial Forums, on one visit.

Trajan’s Market: Skip The Line Ticket + Multimedia Video

Mobile ticketInstant confirmationFree cancellation

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The tiers:

• Under-6s go free.
• EU citizens aged 18 to 25 pay a reduced rate.
• Entry is free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month.
• From February 2026, residents of Rome and the Metropolitan City go free with ID.

Tips:

• You don’t need to pre-book because the site rarely queues. But booking online is genuinely convenient.
  • It settles your day in advance and skips the ticket desk.
  • And the multimedia ticket adds the reconstruction video and audio guide, which earn their keep on a site whose route isn’t always obvious.
• The one thing to plan for is that online ticket. You pick it up at the Touristation office by Piazza Venezia, a couple of minutes from the entrance, so leave a little time for the detour.
• Time it for the first Sunday of the month and you walk in free.

Plan Your Visit

What to See & Do

Built around 110 AD by Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan’s court architect, the market stacked roughly 150 shops and offices over several levels against the slope of the Quirinal hill. People like to call it the world’s oldest shopping mall.

What sets it apart from Rome’s grander ruins is that you don’t look down at it from a railing. You walk into it.

You enter at the top and work your way down towards the Forum.

The Great Hall and the market levels

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The way in is through the Grande Aula, the Great Hall: a soaring two-storey room roofed by six cross-vaults, the concrete still holding its shape after nineteen centuries. It’s cool and quiet inside, and it doubles as the museum’s entrance.

From there the complex opens out in tiers. Shop fronts and vaulted rooms run in curved rows down the hillside, corridors linking one level to the next, so you move through a genuine multi-storey building rather than a field of foundations.

Via Biberatica and the terraces over Trajan’s Column

ivanmoreno/Depositphotos

Halfway down runs Via Biberatica, and it’s the stretch most people remember. It’s the most complete ancient street left in Rome: a narrow paved lane, still walled two and three storeys high on either side, so you walk it the way a Roman would have, hemmed in by shopfronts rather than gazing over rubble.

Then the terraces open up, and this is the view no other site in Rome gives you. From the upper level you look straight down onto Trajan’s Column, close enough to read the spiral relief that winds around it, all 155 scenes of the emperor’s Dacian Wars carved in an unbroken strip.

Beyond it the Imperial Forums spread out below, with the white bulk of the Vittoriano off to one side. It’s the best vantage point in the city for the column, and you’ll usually have the railing to yourself.

The Museum of the Imperial Forums

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The Museum of the Imperial Forums opened here in 2007, and it’s built into the ancient rooms rather than bolted on. Each hall takes one of the imperial forums in turn, those of Caesar, Augustus, Nerva, the Templum Pacis and Trajan, laying out the marble fragments, sculpture and scale models alongside 3D reconstructions of how each once stood.

It’s beautifully labelled and, best of all, nearly empty. On a warm day it’s also air-conditioned, which makes it the natural place to slow down after the terraces.

The Torre delle Milizie

EnginKorkmaz/Depositphotos

Crowning the whole complex is the Torre delle Milizie, a squat 50-metre brick tower from the 13th century. It lost two of its storeys in the earthquake of 1348 and has leaned very slightly ever since, which you notice the moment you stand beneath it.

Insider Tips

• Come here after a crowded morning. After the Forum or the Colosseum, these rooms feel startlingly quiet, and you’ll rarely share them with more than a handful of people.
• Don’t trust the outdoor route to be obvious. It’s easy to get turned around between the levels and backtrack, so keep the map or the audio guide to hand.
• See it after dark. The whole complex is floodlit at night and looks superb from Via dei Fori Imperiali, no ticket needed.
• Save the museum for the hottest part of the afternoon. It’s shaded and cool when the open terraces are baking.
• Photos are welcome, but leave the flash and tripod packed away.

FAQs