I booked the Colosseum Arena Tour with Palatine Hill & Roman Forum through Carpe Diem Tours, and the experience was smooth and enjoyable. Their communication is excellent — very responsive on WhatsApp, and they’ll message you if you’re running late. They also have a Carpe Diem app, which I recommend downloading.
The guide spoke clear English and used photo books to show what the sites originally looked like, which really helped with visualisation. The area isn’t like a museum — there’s no curated display or information panels to read. Without a guide, most of the ruins would be hard to interpret.
Palatine Hill involves a fair bit of walking, and the Colosseum has steep steps both going up and exiting. What stood out most was how interactive the guide was, explaining the history in a way that made everything more engaging as if exploring alone, the ruins can start to look like “rocks of different sizes”.