Italian sites you must book, and when tickets drop

The Last Supper releases its tickets a whole season ahead, the Cappella Sansevero 60 days ahead and the Colosseum 30, and three more sites, the Galleria Borghese, Brunelleschi's dome and the Crypt of Original Sin near Matera, make booking compulsory without publishing a release window.

The criterion: compulsory booking with a known release date

Six sites in our sources refuse entry without a booking, and that's the first test for this list. A site ranks higher if it also publishes when its tickets go on sale, because that's the date you need to put in your calendar.

"Booking recommended" doesn't qualify. Neither does a site that sells out in practice but still has a ticket office that sells on the day. Three of the six also pass the second test.

Ranked by how far ahead tickets are released

The first three give you a date to set an alarm for. The last three give you a rule.

The Last Supper sells a season at a time

Tickets for the Last Supper are released quarterly: in September for November to January, in December for February to April, in March for May to July, and in June for August to October. Every Wednesday at noon, about 215¹ extra tickets a day for the following week go on sale, online only.

Booking is compulsory for every ticket, including free ones. A full ticket costs 15 euro and 2 euro for EU citizens aged 18 to 25 in 2026. If you missed the quarterly release, the Wednesday batch is your realistic second chance; the full mechanism is on the Last Supper releases tickets quarterly.

Cappella Sansevero opens 60 days out

The Cappella Sansevero, the Naples chapel of the Veiled Christ, releases online tickets 60 days before your visit date, with a further batch two days before. Booking is compulsory.

The museum is open every day except Tuesday, 9:00 am to 7:00 pm, and a full ticket costs 12.00 euro in 2026. That two-day batch is the one to watch if your Naples dates were fixed late.

The Colosseum opens 30 days out

Colosseum tickets go on sale online 30 days before the visit date, carry your name, and come with a compulsory entry time. With the ordinary 24-hour ticket, your time inside the amphitheater is limited to 75 minutes.

Thirty days is the shortest window of the three, and the most competitive. The release routine, including the time of day it happens, is on the Colosseum ticket release.

Three sites that require a booking but publish no window

At the Galleria Borghese in Rome booking is compulsory for everyone, including under-18s who enter free, and costs a fixed 2.00 euro. Visits run in two-hour slots with a cap per slot; the last slot, at 5:45 pm, is shorter.

Brunelleschi's dome in Florence requires a time slot that you can neither change nor cancel. Last entries are at 6:45 pm on weekdays and 4:30 pm on Saturdays; on Sundays and holidays you can climb only from 12:45 to 4:30 pm, and the dome is closed for maintenance from November 16 to 20, 2026.

The Crypt of Original Sin, a rock church outside Matera with frescoes from the 8th and 9th centuries, is visited only by booking at fixed times: six a day from April to September, at 9:00 am, 10:30 am and noon, then 3:00, 4:30 and 6:00 pm, five in March and October, four from November to February. For every release window we track, see the ticket release calendar.

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