Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

The Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus can only be visited by reservation at the number 060608, costs €4.00 for a full ticket, and the guided tour is not included in the price. It lies below street level in Piazza della Bocca della Verità, on the side of the carceres, that is, the starting gates of the chariots. As of September 28, 2026 it is listed among the open monuments in the Sovrintendenza Capitolina list, not among those closed for the PNRR works.

It is one of the largest Mithraic sanctuaries preserved in Rome. On this point the popular sources insist, the institutional ones do not: the Sovrintendenza page describes the rooms without rankings and without measurements. Whoever writes that it is "the largest Mithraeum in Rome" is making a claim that no public body puts in writing. Large it is, and you feel it walking inside. The record, no.

What the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus is and why you can't walk in freely

A mithraeum is the worship hall of a male religious brotherhood that in the second and third centuries AD spread across the empire following the legions, merchants and officials. The god is called Mithras, comes from an Iranian cultural area passed through Hellenistic filters, and his founding story is the killing of a bull. The halls are dark by choice, not through an accident of conservation.

Here the sanctuary was carved out of the ground floor of an already existing brick building of the imperial age. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina dates the adaptation into a mithraeum to the third century AD. The Turismo Roma page and the Roma Art Guide page place the construction of the host building in the second century. The two pieces of information do not contradict each other: first the warehouse or service complex, then the religious conversion of some rooms.

The closure to free public access does not come from an administrative whim. The monument is part of the so-called Monumenti del Territorio, a network of minor sites that the Sovrintendenza opens on rotation with its own staff, without a fixed ticket office and without continuous custody. No permanent custodian means no open door. Whoever arrives there without a reservation finds a gate and nothing else.

The useful comparison is with the other visitable Roman mithraea. The one under the Basilica of San Clemente is seen with the ticket for the underground complex, every day. The one at Santa Prisca opens on reduced calendars run by the Augustinian fathers. The Barberini Mithraeum also opens by reservation. The Circus Maximus follows the municipal rule.

Where it is, with the right address and not the one circulating online

The address published by the institutional sources is Piazza della Bocca della Verità 16, in the Ripa rione. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina page, the Turismo Roma page and the Roma Art Guide page all give it identically. The street number corresponds to the building that closes the eastern side of the square, toward the Circus Maximus, not to the church with the mask.

The indication "Piazza dell'Ara Massima di Ercole" also circulates. There is no square with that name. There is Via dell'Ara Massima di Ercole, a short street in the same area, and the mithraeum is often called the Mithraeum of the Ara Massima di Ercole because the great altar of Hercules of the Forum Boarium stood around here. The name is traditional, the postal address is another.

Verified metro and bus

The metro station is Circo Massimo, line B. From there you go down along Via del Circo Massimo skirting the track of the ancient circus, 10 minutes at a normal pace, almost all of it slightly downhill. The useful stop for tram 3 is Aventino/Circo Massimo, a convenient terminus for those arriving from Trastevere or from Porta Maggiore.

By bus the lines serving the Bocca della Verità stop on the ordinary route are the 44 and the 170, both passing on Via Luigi Petroselli in both directions. Lines 51 and 85 touch the Cerchi/Bocca della Verità and Circo Massimo stops only when they are diverted from the Imperial Forums, that is, on holidays and on pedestrianization days. Check the route the day before counting on it.

On foot the area is crossed quickly. From the Theater of Marcellus it is six minutes along Via Petroselli. From Tiber Island 10. From the Roman Forum a quarter of an hour going behind the Palatine. The worst stretch is crossing Via Petroselli at rush hour: the light is short and the cars turn wide.

Reservation, hours, price: the data that matter

There is only one channel, the Roma Capitale call center 060608, active every day from 9:00 to 19:00. There is no on-site ticket office open to passersby, there is no online booking platform dedicated to this monument, and no private operator can guarantee access without going through there. If a website asks you for money promising immediate entry, you are buying something else.

The rates published by the Sovrintendenza for the Monumenti del Territorio are €4.00 full and €3.00 reduced. Admission is free for residents of Rome and the Metropolitan City with ID, and for MIC Card holders. Payment is in cash on site: no POS, no cards. Bring the right change, because change isn't always available.

The declared capacity for this monument is 25 people per visit. Organized groups are entitled to a limited number of quarterly appointments, with a minimum number of tickets and mandatory cancellation within 72 hours. Individuals enter on the dates of the quarterly calendar published by the Sovrintendenza, without a companion guide included. The guided tour is not included in the ticket: this is the point that surprises almost everyone.

The page to read before anything else is the Sovrintendenza Capitolina page on the access and reservation rules for the Monumenti del Territorio. In the version updated to September 24, 2026 the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus appears in the list of open sites. 14 other monuments appear instead among those temporarily closed for PNRR works.

What is closed at the moment

The list of closed sites includes places that those organizing underground itineraries used to include out of habit: the Auditorium of Maecenas, the Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas, the Insula of the Ara Coeli, the Ludus Magnus and the Roman insula of San Paolo alla Regola. An itinerary built on last year's data crumbles in two phone calls.

The Tomb of the Scipios instead appears open, and is a quarter of an hour on foot from the Baths of Caracalla. Anyone who wants to build a day of underground Rome through the municipal channel does well to phone about two or three sites in the same call, because the quarterly calendar almost never lines them up on its own.

Accessibility: the answer is no

The Sovrintendenza explicitly declares that the monument is not accessible to disabled visitors. This is not a cautionary formula: you go below street level by stairs, the ancient spaces have thresholds and level changes, and no equipped alternative route is listed. Anyone with mobility difficulties, even temporary ones, has to know this before booking and not in front of the gate.

Even for those who walk well there are practical warnings. The ancient floor is uneven, the lighting is deliberately low, and the spaces are narrow in several points. Closed shoes with a sole that grips, not sandals. In summer it's cooler below than at the surface, in winter much colder: a sweatshirt in your bag solves the problem.

The 1931 discovery and the Teatro dell'Opera warehouse

The mithraeum came to light in 1931, during works to create a storage depot for scenery and costumes for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. The date is confirmed by the Roma Art Guide page and by the encyclopedia entry, and the theater construction-site context also appears in the English page of Turismo Roma. A construction-site find, not a planned excavation campaign.

The building above ground is the one Romans still call the Pantanella, from the pasta factory that worked there. The Turismo Roma page directly links the theater depot to the building of the former pasta factory. Other institutional sources name only the Opera warehouse without mentioning the pasta factory. The substance doesn't change: under a converted industrial property there was a third-century sanctuary.

1931 in Rome is a year of the pickax. Half the city between the Tiber and the Capitoline Hill was being demolished and rearranged, and in those very years the layout we see today around the Temple of Hercules Victor and the Temple of Portunus was taking shape. Much was lost without documentation. This survived because someone understood right away what was in front of them.

Anyone comparing this story with other discoveries understands how much chance counts. The Insula of the Ara Coeli emerged from tearing down 19th-century houses, the Roman Houses of the Caelian Hill were found under a basilica, the Domus Aurea had been filled with earth on purpose. Rome gives back what is taken off the top of it.

The rooms: what you actually walk through

The Sovrintendenza's description speaks of a series of communicating rooms covered by barrel vaults. It is the typical structure: not a single hall, but a sequence that accompanies whoever enters from the outside world to the point where the depicted sacrifice takes place. The route is designed to remove light, noise and reference points at every step.

The detailed entries, consistent with one another, articulate the space into an access corridor, an apparatorium serving as a sacristy, an atrium with niches meant for statues of the dadophors, and finally the spelaeum, the sanctuary proper. Along the central hall run the masonry benches on which the initiates reclined for the ritual banquets.

The semicircular niche covered by a half-dome, at the back, housed the image of the god. It is the point where the architectural design and the theological one coincide: the gaze of whoever enters is led there and nowhere else. Someone visiting a mithraeum for the first time usually doesn't notice until it is pointed out.

The paving was in marble, partly reused, with later repairs in large square bricks. The reuse is a historical fact, not a defect: it says the community had the means for a decent floor but not for new marble, and took what the neighborhood offered. A mid-range sanctuary, not an imperial foundation.

Why the barrel vaults matter

The barrel vault is not an aesthetic choice. It serves to close the space overhead without windows, to support the weight of the building above and to create that low, dull reverberation that anyone who has spoken in a mithraeum recognizes. The builders knew that sound, as well as light, was part of the rite.

The bull relief, the marble slab and the inscription

The Sovrintendenza Capitolina declares the presence of a relief and a large marble slab, both depicting the killing of the cosmic bull, and specifies that they are preserved in situ. This is the institutional wording, and the one worth relying on. Two artifacts, same subject, both still inside the monument.

The tauroctony is a scene codified across the empire. The god in the Phrygian cap holds the bull still and plunges the knife into its neck, turning his head the other way. Around appear a dog, a snake, a scorpion, and the two torchbearers, Cautes with the torch raised and Cautopates with it lowered. Sun and Moon close the composition.

The current reading is astronomical and agricultural together: from the death of the bull come the ears of grain, and each figure corresponds to a constellation. The value of the scene for the ancient faithful was, however, initiatory, not didactic. No Mithraic text has reached us: we know what they saw, not what they thought while seeing it. The difference is enormous and needs saying.

On the dedicator the popular sources agree on one name, Tiberius Claudius Hermes, reported in an inscription accompanying the relief. The circulating formula is Deo Soli Invicto Mithrae followed by the name and the declaration of the gift. The Sovrintendenza page does not mention the inscription. Consequently the name should be reported as a widespread attribution, not as official data.

Anyone who wants to see a tauroctony without waiting for a quarterly calendar has alternatives in the city. At the Capitoline Museums and in the municipal archaeological collections Mithraic materials appear, and at the Centrale Montemartini the contrast between ancient marble and industrial machinery makes the reading easier than in the dark.

The cult of Mithras in Rome, without the novel

Mithraism was an initiation brotherhood, reserved for men, organized in seven grades. It had no central clergy, no widely circulated sacred texts, and did not seek mass conversions. It worked through networks: soldiers, customs officers, imperial slaves, merchants. Rome has yielded dozens of sites, most of them small, carved out of cellars, baths, warehouses.

19th-century historiography built the myth of Mithraism as the great rival of Christianity. It is an idea that holds up poorly against the numbers: the communities were small, excluded half the population by statute, and lacked the organizational structure that made Christian expansion possible. The rivalry was local and limited, not a clash of civilizations.

The most telling Roman fact is topography. Mithraea appear where there were people who worked and moved around: under San Clemente next to a public building, on the Aventine under Santa Prisca, here close to the circus and the warehouses of the river port. The cult followed trades, not the elegant residential districts.

The Circus Maximus as a context helps in understanding. Around the track there were workshops, stables, depots, people who worked there all year for a few dozen days of races. A male brotherhood tied to work found its natural pool of adepts there. The sanctuary didn't happen to land in that spot by chance.

A curiosity about the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

The monument carries two official names and neither is entirely exact. Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus places it next to a structure from which it is separated by the modern street. Mithraeum of the Ara Massima di Ercole names it for an altar whose precise position we don't know for certain. Romans simply call it the mithraeum under the Pantanella.

The double naming creates confusion even in the offices. Whoever phones 060608 and asks for "the mithraeum" without specifying risks getting information on another site, because in the municipal circuit there is more than one mithraeum. Say the full name, Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus, and repeat it. It saves five minutes of phone call.

Then there is an archive curiosity concerning the public. For decades this mithraeum was accessible almost only to archaeologists and study groups, with sporadic openings tied to conferences. The stable inclusion in the circuit of the Monumenti del Territorio is recent, and has completely changed who sets foot there.

One thing nobody tells you about the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

The €4.00 ticket does not include a guide. It seems a bureaucratic detail and instead it changes the experience radically. Individuals enter on the quarterly calendar dates "without a guide," as the Sovrintendenza writes. It means you find yourself in a dark space full of symbols that nobody explains.

Without a reading prepared beforehand, half the monument stays mute. The relief is recognizable, the benches make sense, the niche can be guessed. But the sequence of the rooms, the function of the apparatorium, the meaning of the dadophors in the niches: those things can't be deduced by looking. Whoever goes unprepared comes out saying it was beautiful and dark.

The countermeasure is simple and nobody writes it down. Read the Sovrintendenza Capitolina page on the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus the evening before, print it or save it offline, and bring it with you. Below there is no reliable phone signal. 20 minutes of advance reading is worth more than any audio guide improvised on the spot.

Second thing that isn't said: cash. Payment on site is in cash, and in Piazza della Bocca della Verità area ATMs are not around the corner. The nearest convenient one is toward Via Petroselli and the Theater of Marcellus. Arriving without coins forces a detour of 15 minutes, with the appointment ticking away.

The advice I give you for visiting the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

Call 060608 with three alternative dates ready and the willingness to move to a weekday. The quarterly calendar concentrates the openings, and the weekend dates go first. A Tuesday morning in February is easy to get, a Saturday in May almost never. This is the only advice that always works.

Show up 15 minutes early, not five. The entrance is not an obvious door and the first to arrive starts looking for it while the others wait. With 25 people per slot, the group leaves when it's complete: whoever arrives late wastes everyone's time and sometimes stays outside without a refund.

Build the day around the visit, not the other way around. An hour underground is worth it if before or after you walk at the surface in the same area: Mouth of Truth, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Arch of Janus, San Giorgio in Velabro. They are all less than five minutes from one another and cost nothing.

Bring a real flashlight, not the phone light. The phone light drains the battery, dazzles the others and returns false colors on the marble. A small warm-light flashlight for a few euros completely changes the reading of the relief. It is the single object I recommend most to anyone going down into a Roman underground space.

With kids

Under six I would skip it. The dark, the narrow spaces and the absence of anything to touch make the visit long even for an attentive adult. From nine or 10 years old it works well instead, provided you tell the story of the bull before going down. A kid who knows what he's looking for looks at the relief for 10 minutes.

Another well-known fact, yet seldom cited

Everyone knows there are mithraea under Rome. Almost nobody connects the fact with the practical reason they survive: they were semi-basement spaces, and when the building above collapsed or was filled in, the worship hall stayed sealed under the rubble. The destruction of the upper floor protected the lower one.

The corollary holds for half the city. The Domus Aurea survives because Trajan built baths on top of it by filling it with earth. The Roman Domus of Palazzo Valentini lie under a 16th-century palace. The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas was under a vineyard. Ancient Rome is saved where modern Rome has climbed on top of it.

The second seldom-cited fact concerns the end of the cult. There is no closing date for the Roman mithraea, and there is almost never a documented violent destruction. Many were simply abandoned between the fourth and fifth centuries, walled up, filled in. Some show signs of damage aimed at the images. Here the question remains open and the institutional sources don't commit.

Third fact: mithraea were not secret. They were reserved, which is different. Whoever lived in the block knew perfectly well that a brotherhood met on the ground floor, and the inscriptions with the names of the dedicators were made to be read. Clandestinity is a modern narrative invention, useful to novels and not very faithful to the facts.

The right photo to take at the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

Ask first if you can photograph, because at the Monumenti del Territorio the conditions change from site to site and from slot to slot, and flash is normally excluded everywhere. A simple question at the entrance, a clear answer. Whoever shoots without asking in a reduced-capacity space gets spotted immediately and it doesn't look good.

If the answer is yes, the photo that works is the enfilade of the communicating rooms with the barrel vaults, shot from the corridor toward the back. It is not the relief in the foreground, which in the dark almost always comes out badly and which you find better photographed in the official pages. It is the sequence of the space that tells what a mithraeum was.

Technically: turn off the flash, raise the ISO without fear of noise, rest the phone or camera on a solid surface instead of holding them by hand. A masonry bench or a threshold serves as a tripod. Two seconds of exposure with the camera resting beats any handheld shot with the flash blasted on the marble.

The complementary photo is taken outside, and not everyone thinks of it. From the staircase toward the Circus Maximus, at sunset, you frame the building with the track behind: modern building above, ancient sanctuary below, imperial arena in front. It tells the layering better than any caption.

A contrarian position on the most beautiful mithraeum in Rome

The standard guide sends everyone under San Clemente and files the matter. On a closer look, the San Clemente mithraeum is the most convenient, not the most instructive. You get there with the complex ticket, you see it in 10 minutes within a crowded route, and it stays squeezed between the upper and the lower basilica, which capture all the attention.

Here it is the opposite. The mithraeum of the Circus Maximus doesn't compete with anything else: you go down for that, you stay there for that, you go back up. The rooms are larger and the sequence is readable in a way that gets lost under San Clemente. The price is the mandatory reservation and a calendar that doesn't care about your plans.

The second part of the reasoning bothers people more. I think the "tour not included" formula on a monument of this kind is a mistake of approach. Four euros is very little, and nobody complains about the price. But a Mithraic sanctuary without explanation produces half-satisfied visitors, who won't come back and won't tell anyone anything precise.

I would prefer a ticket at €8 or €10 with 20 minutes of narration included. I say it knowing it is unpopular and that many colleagues think the opposite, defending the political price as a form of democratic access. Access without keys to the reading, on a monument like this, is democratic only on paper.

Some important events that happened here in history

In the second century AD the brick building that would host the sanctuary is built, in a densely built-up area between the circus and the river port. The original function was a service one, tied to the work and the depots of the area. The Turismo Roma and Roma Art Guide pages agree on this dating of the shell.

In the third century some ground-floor rooms are readapted as a mithraeum. This is the phase that the Sovrintendenza Capitolina explicitly indicates. It is a reuse intervention, with floors in marble also reused: the community takes an existing space and transforms it, instead of building from scratch. It was Mithraic practice across the empire.

Between the fourth and fifth centuries the Mithraic cult dies out in the city. For this sanctuary we have no dated episode, and no institutional source proposes one. What we know is that the space ends up below walking level and disappears from the neighborhood's memory for about 15 centuries.

In 1931 the pickax of a theater construction site brings it back to light. A depot for scenery and costumes of the Teatro dell'Opera was being built in the area of the former pasta factory. The discovery fits into the great season of demolitions between the Tiber and the Capitoline Hill, the one that produced the current layout of the Forum Boarium and surroundings.

In the following years the monument remains a place for insiders, with rare openings. Only with the organization of the circuit of the Monumenti del Territorio does it enter a system of regulated visits, bookable by anyone through the single municipal number. It is the step that made it possible for an ordinary visitor to go down there.

In 2026 the monument appears in the list of open sites in the Sovrintendenza notice, while 14 others remain closed for PNRR construction sites. The season of public works on the municipal heritage is redrawing the map of what can be seen, and this mithraeum for now is on the lucky side.

Who has passed through the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

The name that recurs in the descriptions is Tiberius Claudius Hermes, indicated as the dedicator in the inscription accompanying the relief. The imperial family name suggests a freedman of the imperial household or a descendant of freedmen, that is exactly the social profile that Roman Mithraism attracted: men with means, a public role and no aristocracy behind them.

One clarification is needed on this name. It appears in the encyclopedia entries and in several popular pages, but not in the description published by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina, which speaks of the relief and the slab without citing dedicators. Whoever tells it to a group should make the same distinction: a traditionally reported name, not data confirmed by the body that manages the site.

First of all, dozens of men passed through here of whom we will never know anything. People from the circus neighborhood: stable hands, warehousemen, depot clerks, perhaps a soldier passing through. The brotherhood was small by definition, the benches tell how many people lay together, and the number is never large.

In the 20th century came the workers of the 1931 theater construction site and the municipal archaeologists who handled its study. The reference scientific literature starts from the reports of those years and reaches the later topographical syntheses. It is specialist material, but whoever wants to go beyond the tourist page finds the starting point there.

Today 25 people per slot pass through, a few times a month. It is one of the few ancient places in Rome where the number of contemporary visitors in a year is probably comparable to that of ancient attendees. It is not a joke: the capacity is the same one the hall imposed in the third century.

What to see nearby, and here the area is generous

Within five minutes on foot one of the densest archaeological areas of the city is concentrated. The Temple of Hercules Victor and the Temple of Portunus occupy the same square, standing for over 20 centuries. The Arch of Janus and the Arch of the Argentarii complete the picture of the Velabrum.

The churches of the area deserve more than a quick pass. Santa Maria in Cosmedin has a medieval interior that almost nobody looks at, because everyone is in line outside for the Mouth of Truth. San Giorgio in Velabro is bare and silent. San Nicola in Carcere preserves three Republican temples in its walls.

Climbing the Aventine in a quarter of an hour changes everything: Santa Sabina with its fifth-century wooden doors, the Orange Garden, the Villa of the Priory of Malta with the line in front of the keyhole, San Saba farther down. The overall guide is Aventine: what to see.

On the other side of the circus you climb to the Palatine and the Palatine Museum, or you continue toward the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. Toward the south instead there are the Baths of Caracalla, and farther down the Rose Garden of Rome when it is in bloom.

Anyone with half a day more continues toward Testaccio: Monte dei Cocci, Nuovo Mercato Testaccio, Ex Mattatoio, the Pyramid of Cestius and the Non-Catholic Cemetery, with Porta San Paolo on the Aurelian Walls. The complete picture is in Testaccio: what to see.

Toward the river you cross at Ponte Palatino looking at the Ponte Rotto, you reach Tiber Island and from there Trastevere, with Santa Cecilia a few steps from the bridge. An hour's walk without hurry, all on the flat.

Eating around the Circus Maximus without getting fleeced

The strip between Piazza della Bocca della Verità and Via del Circo Massimo is one of the most exposed in Rome: continuous tourist traffic, little residential life, no natural control from the people who live there. It means that the ratio between what you pay and what you eat gets worse the closer you get to the monuments. It's physics, not malice.

The signals to read before sitting down are always the same. The menu with photographs of the dishes says the place doesn't count on being understood in words, and therefore doesn't count on customers who come back. The woman rolling out pasta dough in the window or on the sidewalk is a stage lure designed to be photographed: it says nothing about what comes out of the kitchen.

Whoever stops you on the sidewalk inviting you in is selling you an empty table, and an empty table at noon in an area like this has a reason. The kitchen open without interruption from 10:00 to midnight is another red flag: nobody cooks well for 14 hours straight, they heat and reheat.

Then there is the question of prices in front of monuments. Items without prices on the menu, fish or meat "according to availability," different price lists between the indoor room and the little outside tables, the cover charge that appears only on the receipt. These are practices you don't see in the places Romans frequent, because the regular customer notices on the second round and doesn't come back.

Chains with the sign repeated at every corner of the center work as tourist attractions, exactly like a paid monument. I don't name them and there's no need to name them: you recognize them because you meet three in 500 meters. Romans don't go, but not out of snobbery. Tourists go because they are reassuring, visible and predictable, and that is a legitimate service.

The criterion is only one and doesn't require apps or reviews. Look at who is sitting and in what language they order. If at 14:00 there are office workers, bricklayers, neighborhood people ordering in Italian without looking at the menu, you're in the right place. If there are only backpacks and maps, walk five more minutes.

Five minutes in this area is truly enough. Toward Testaccio, toward the interior of the Aventine or toward the end of Via Petroselli the food landscape changes sharply, because residential life returns and with it the regular customer. The same sum that in front of the circus buys a mediocre dish, 300 meters farther buys a serious lunch.

The recommended addresses are gathered in a public list on Google Maps, updated over time: the list of places where I eat in Rome. It is not a ranking and it is not sponsored. These are places I've gone back to more than once, which is the only judgment that counts.

Frequently asked questions about the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus

Is the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus open now?

As of September 28, 2026 it appears in the list of open sites in the Sovrintendenza Capitolina notice on the Monumenti del Territorio, in the version dated September 24, 2026. It does not appear among the 14 monuments temporarily closed for PNRR works. The list changes often: before organizing anything it's worth rereading that page and then phoning.

How do you book a visit to the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus?

The channel is the Roma Capitale call center 060608, active every day from 9:00 to 19:00. There is no booking portal dedicated to this single monument. Individual visitors choose among the dates of a quarterly calendar, groups have a limited number of quarterly appointments with mandatory cancellation within 72 hours of the appointment.

How much does the ticket cost?

The rates published by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina for the Monumenti del Territorio are €4.00 for full and €3.00 for reduced. Admission is free for residents of Rome and the Metropolitan City, with ID, and for MIC Card holders. Payment is made in cash directly on site.

Is the guided tour included in the ticket?

No, and this is the fact that surprises most. The Sovrintendenza specifies that the guided tour is not included in the ticket price and that individuals enter on the stated dates without a guide. Whoever wants an explanation has to arrange it on their own, arriving prepared or relying on an outside guide who handles the reservation.

What is the exact address?

Piazza della Bocca della Verità 16, in the Ripa rione. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina, Turismo Roma and the city's archaeological pages agree on it. The wording "Piazza dell'Ara Massima di Ercole" that circulates online does not correspond to an existing place name: there is Via dell'Ara Massima di Ercole, and the monument's alternative title derives from that name.

Is the Mithraeum of the Circus Maximus accessible to people with disabilities?

No. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina explicitly declares that the monument is not accessible to disabled visitors. You go below street level by stairs, the ancient spaces have thresholds and level changes and the lighting is low. Anyone with mobility difficulties, even temporary ones, has to weigh this before booking, because no equipped alternative route is listed.

How many people enter at a time?

The capacity indicated for this monument is 25 visitors per slot. It is a physical limit of the space, not a commercial choice. In periods of greatest demand the dates of the quarterly calendar sell out fast, especially Saturday and Sunday ones, so it's best to phone as soon as the new calendar comes out.

Can you take photos inside?

The conditions at the Monumenti del Territorio vary from site to site, so the answer must be asked at the entrance from the staff of the slot. Flash is normally excluded in spaces of this kind, both for conservation and for the disturbance to other visitors. With low light you need to rest the camera on a solid surface instead of shooting handheld.

What is the difference from the mithraeum of San Clemente and the one at Santa Prisca?

Operator, hours and the character of the space change. The mithraeum under San Clemente is visited with the ticket for the underground complex, every day. The one at Santa Prisca depends on the religious community that keeps the basilica. This one depends on the municipal calendar and the number 060608.

Who wrote this page

This page is edited by the editorial team of Tour Leader Pro, the Roman project office that designs and coordinates visits, itineraries and cultural events in Rome and Lazio. Hours, rates and access conditions given here come from the official sources cited in the text and were checked on September 28, 2026. Recheck them before you go, because at these monuments they change constantly.

Anyone lining up a Roman day made of booking channels that differ from one another, reduced capacities, quarterly calendars, cash payments and walking distances that look short on paper but aren't once uphill, for themselves or for a group, will find working tools at Tour Leader Pro, designed both for those who lead visits and for those who organize on their own.

For the wider picture, rail connections, rentals, airports and destinations in Lazio outside the center of Rome, from the Castelli to the lakes to the coast, the reference resource is Italy Planner.