For the first time since the era of the Caesars, the Passaggio di Commodo, the hidden corridor once reserved for Roman emperors, opened to the public. Small groups of up to eight visitors entered the brick-vaulted tunnel every Monday and Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. as part of the Full Experience circuit of the Colosseum Archaeological Park. Access came through advance, time-slotted tickets on the park’s website. A 30-metre section of the passage was accessible, with work set to extend it to its full 55 metres in 2026.
“It is an extraordinary place, and now the world will see it,” said site director Alfonsina Russo, according to the Sun. Russo added that the initiative both diversified visitor flows and revealed architectural details long known only to specialists.
Engineers carved the corridor into the foundations of the Flavian Amphitheatre at the end of the first century CE, after Titus inaugurated the arena in 80 CE. From the outside, the tunnel wound in an S-shape under the southern stands before ending abruptly. Archaeologists still debated whether it once connected to the Ludus Magnus gladiators’ barracks or the Caelian Hill.
The passage took its name from Emperor Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, who ruled from 180 to 192 CE and was known for his passion for gladiatorial games. Italian cultural officials said the opening allowed visitors to understand how an emperor moved through the Colosseum. Reuters noted that until the morning of the opening, only emperors and their entourage had walked the stones, emerging unseen in the honor tribune above the arena.
“Visitors can now sense what it was like to be an emperor entering the arena,” said architect Barbara Nazzaro, who coordinated the works. Her team carried out a year-long restoration between October 2024 and September 2025, stabilizing masonry, rebuilding a collapsed vault section, and combating humidity. The Archaeological Park, Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and the EU’s NextGenerationEU programme funded the project.
The walls once glimmered with marble veneer; the metal clamps that anchored the slabs remained visible. Looters removed most of the stone over the centuries, and later workers applied painted plaster. Conservators uncovered faint landscapes, hunting scenes, and myths of Dionysus and Ariadne beneath grime. A new LED system reproduced shafts of light that once filtered through ceiling vents, while QR-code projections provided digital reconstructions of lost stuccoes and frescoes. “With a little imagination and the help of virtual reconstructions, visitors can appreciate the frescoes, marbles, and original decorations that covered the walls,” Nazzaro said in a briefing to La Razón.
Nineteenth-century excavators located the corridor but judged it too fragile for tourists. Damp conditions remained the main obstacle; biological patinas and dust darkened the surfaces, restorer Angelica Pujia recalled. Cleaning revealed reliefs of wild-boar hunts, bear baiting, and acrobats that scholars viewed as an artistic prelude to the spectacles held above.
“It was a secret, exclusive, and exceptionally protected passage… Let us remember that the Colosseum housed up to 50,000 people, among whom there could be assassins,” said Federica Rinaldi, the park’s chief archaeologist, to RMF24. Ancient historian Cassius Dio recorded that Commodus survived an attack in a dark Colosseum corridor, a tradition that the modern team cautiously linked to the tunnel.
The next phase, scheduled for 2026, will explore and consolidate the stretch that once continued outside the amphitheatre. Until then, visitors stop at a glass wall that lets them watch conservators working on the plaster.
Commodus became an icon of villainy after Joaquin Phoenix portrayed him in Ridley Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator, a portrayal that bolstered his notoriety. The added cinematic interest is expected to lift the Colosseum’s attendance; the amphitheatre welcomed 14.7 million visitors last year.
For tourists beneath the Arch of Constantine on opening day, the new itinerary offered a chance to follow the route an emperor once used to survey—and sometimes star in—the dramas of Rome’s most emblematic monument. The shadows are longer now, the marble mostly gone, but the sense of power that flowed through the hidden stone artery remained intact.
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