Orion Club

Orion Club is the concert hall of Ciampino, at Viale John Fitzgerald Kennedy 52, just outside Rome's Grande Raccordo Anulare, in the industrial area of Gregna Sant'Andrea. It is one of those places that in the Roman imagination lives a double life: for one part of the public it is the club where you dance until dawn, for another part it is the hall where cult foreign bands come that play three dates in Italy and one of them touches the capital. The two things coexist in the same warehouse, because the venue was born with a structure designed to be reconfigured: a floor of about 1,200 square meters spread over two main rooms, a privé and a space used for after shows. The formula the management chose from the start is called European-style live clubbing, and it means exactly this: the same night can begin with a ticketed concert and continue with a music selection that goes on for hours, with the same entrance and the same audience moving from one room to another. Anyone arriving here for the first time finds a low building surrounded by asphalt, craft warehouses and a few pine trees, in a piece of territory that after eight in the evening stays deserted. And it is precisely this location, apparently a disadvantage, that is the technical reason the place works: the volume of a sound system of that level doesn't disturb homes, you can leave the car without circling for half an hour, and the end of the night has no hour imposed by the neighbors. To frame the context well it's also worth looking at the pages of the Castelli Romani Park, of Frascati (RM) and of Marino (RM), because the natural catchment of this hall is not only Rome: it is the whole ring of towns that come down from the Colli Albani toward Via Tuscolana and Via Appia.

Where Orion Club is and how you really get there

The full address is Viale John Fitzgerald Kennedy 52, postal code 00043, municipality of Ciampino, metropolitan city of Rome Capital. The approximate coordinates are 41.809 north and 12.598 east. The fixed point to keep in mind is that Ciampino is not Rome: it is an autonomous municipality of about 40,000 inhabitants wedged between the southeastern boundary of the capital and the first rises of the Colli Albani, born around the airport and grown by densification along Via Appia Nuova and Via Tuscolana. The venue is not located in the built-up center, with its narrow streets and its 1960s buildings, but in the production belt right on the municipal boundary, the one that road signs call Gregna Sant'Andrea. As the crow flies from the Raccordo it is just over a kilometer, and this explains why a place formally outside Rome turns out to be more convenient for many Romans than half the historic center.

By car from the Raccordo and the motorway

The main route is the Grande Raccordo Anulare, exit 21 if you drive on the inner carriageway, exit 22 if you drive on the outer one. In both cases you follow the sign for Ciampino and Gregna Sant'Andrea, which is the place name written on the signs and which counts for much more than the name of the venue, because the latter doesn't appear on the road signage. After the interchange you enter a grid of wide streets, with discontinuous sidewalks and warehouses on the sides: anyone expecting a scenic entrance is thrown, because the facade announces itself only when you are in front of it.

Anyone coming from the north takes the Autostrada del Sole on the Florence to Rome stretch, follows the Roma Nord direction toward the Grande Raccordo Anulare, takes the direction of travel that leads toward Ciampino and continues to exits 21 and 22 following the same sign for Gregna Sant'Andrea. Anyone coming from the south exits at the Roma Sud toll booth at the end of the Naples to Rome stretch, merges onto the Raccordo, takes the Tuscolana direction and continues to the same exits. These are routes that in the evening hours are covered in a few minutes, but which in the late afternoon of weekdays can double in length, because the southeastern quadrant of the Raccordo is one of the most loaded stretches of the entire ring and the queue forms regularly between 17:00 and 20:00.

The two classic mistakes I see made are always the same. The first is typing only the name of the street into the navigator without the street number: Viale Kennedy crosses a long stretch, and some devices lead to the other end, on the opposite side from the entrance. Number 52 must be written in full. The second is trusting the travel time calculated late at night for an arrival that instead happens at rush hour: on concert nights the hall opens its doors when the offices in the area are emptying, and the two flows overlap on the same interchange. The rule in this area is simple: 40 minutes of margin on the stated door opening time, always, and an hour when the date is sold out.

By metro and by bus

The connection with Roman public transport goes through metro line A and its southeastern terminus, Anagnina. From there leaves bus line 551, which serves Ciampino and which the venue itself indicates as the reference connection. It is a short trip in terms of kilometers but subject to the traffic of Via Tuscolana and Appia Nuova, so variable in timing. Anyone choosing this solution must allow for a final walk inside the industrial area, on streets where the sidewalks are not continuous and the lighting is that of a production area: nothing dangerous, but not an urban stroll either, and with the wrong shoes you quickly regret it.

By train

Ciampino has a railway station served by the regional trains that leave from Roma Termini, and the trip lasts a handful of minutes: it is the absolute quickest solution for arriving from the center of Rome, because it avoids road traffic entirely. The problem, as always with concerts, concerns the return: the regional rail service has a limited night window, and the first useful run leaving Ciampino in the early morning hours is given as around 6:00. In between, from the end of a late-night concert to dawn, there remains a gap that has to be covered some other way. From the railway station to the venue, moreover, there remains a stretch that isn't comfortably covered on foot at night, and that requires a bus or a taxi.

The return at night, which is the real problem

On this point it's worth being clear, because it is the difference between a successful night and a ruined one. The venue indicates a night line, the N1 departing from Via Sette Metri in the direction of the Anagnina metro station, with regular runs in the middle hours of the night, and from Anagnina the continuation toward the center of Rome, again with night service. It is a solution that exists and that works, but that requires knowing the departure stop in advance, walking to reach it and accepting long intervals. The three realistic alternatives remain your own car, a ride arranged with someone in the group, or a taxi booked before going into the hall: looking for one at the exit, in an industrial area at three in the morning, together with hundreds of other people who had the same idea, is the mistake that costs the most time of all. The single number of the Roman radio taxis also works from Ciampino, but the wait in that time slot and in that position can be long.

What Orion Club really is: a multipurpose container, not just a nightclub

The definition that circulates most, nightclub, tells only part of the reality and risks leading astray anyone who doesn't know the place. What the owners describe in their presentation is a multitasking club, a space designed as a 360 degree cultural container, where the display of art in all its forms and music in all its genres coexist in the same shell. Behind the promotional language there is a precise organizational model, that of European live clubbing: a mid-sized hall that hosts in the first part of the night a ticketed concert with an artist on the bill, and in the second part a program of music selection that goes on for hours. It is the model that has worked for decades in London, Berlin and Amsterdam, and that in Italy needed more time to establish itself, above all because it requires structures outside the residential fabric.

The reasoning about size is the one that best explains the reason for this hall to exist. In Rome there are very small places, from 200 to 800 seats, where the independent scene plays and where a rising name has its first city date: the Monk, the Largo Venue, the Qube, the Lanificio159. There are enormous structures, where only those who sell thousands of tickets arrive: the Palazzo dello Sport, the Olympic Stadium, the Circus Maximus on the nights of the big summer events. There are prestigious halls with a different vocation, from the Auditorium Parco della Musica to the Teatro Brancaccio to the Auditorium Conciliazione, where the audience is seated and the repertoire is that of theaters. In between remains a band that in Rome has historically been uncovered: the hall of well over a thousand people, standing, with a professional sound system and the possibility of making the night last beyond the end of the concert. It is exactly the slot this venue occupies, together with the Atlantico Live Club Roma, which however covers a larger size and a different urban location.

The hall, the stage and the capacity of Orion Club

The structural fact the owners communicate most consistently concerns the surface: a floor of about 1,200 square meters, spread over two main rooms, with the addition of a privé and a space used for after shows. These are four spaces with different functions, and understanding their logic helps in choosing where to stand during the night.

The main room is the one that hosts the front stage and the concert floor. It has a high ceiling, exposed load-bearing structure and an open plan with no fixed bleachers: it is this absence of permanent seating that makes reconfiguration possible, because the same volume can take an all-standing audience, a mixed audience with rows of chairs at the back, or a dance layout with the DJ booth moved to the center and the stage used as a backdrop. The second room works as a complementary space: on multi-genre nights it hosts a different music program, so that the same ticket gives access to two parallel offerings, and on concert nights it absorbs the public that comes in early or leaves before the end. The privé is the area with table service, bookable in advance and with conditions that vary from time to time depending on the event. The after-show space, finally, is the one that lets the night continue after the end of the concert without the public having to move elsewhere: it is the architectural translation of that live clubbing model mentioned earlier.

On capacity it's best to be honest instead of pretending there is a single official number. The structure communicates the surface of the floor, not a maximum crowd figure, and the industry portals that describe the venue don't converge on a single figure. The reason is technical and holds for any reconfigurable space: the authorized capacity depends on the configuration approved for that individual night, on the position of the stage, on the footprint of the technical production, on the presence or not of seating, on the use or not of the second room and on the requirements of the municipal commission overseeing public entertainment venues. A night with the stage set back and no seating holds many more people than the same hall with the stage forward, safety barriers and a reserved area. The correct number, for a specific date, is the one shown on the access ticket and in the official communication for that date. What can be said with certainty is that the venue sits in the Roman mid-size band: much bigger than clubs for a few hundred people, much smaller than the arenas.

A curiosity about Orion Club

The nicest curiosity concerns what was there before. The venue was not born on virgin ground: it occupies the space of what in the 1990s was one of the most frequented nightclubs of the southeast Roman sector and the Castelli area, the NRG of Ciampino. For an entire generation that name meant something precise: Saturday night out of town, the rows of cars parked along the streets of the industrial area, the return at dawn along the Tuscolana. When the venue closed, that space met the fate of many Italian dance warehouses, that is a period of uncertainty and discontinuous reuse, before the property was rethought for a different purpose.

There is a second curious aspect, and it concerns administrative geography. The venue is told everywhere as Roman, appears in the lists of places to go in Rome, and the public that frequents it comes mostly from the capital. But the address is Ciampino's, an autonomous municipality with its own mayor, its own local police and its own oversight commission. The authorizations for public entertainment, the hours, the acoustic requirements and the capacity rules therefore go through an administration different from the capital's. It is a bureaucratic detail the public never perceives, but it explains why a structure of this kind was able to grow right there and not inside the Raccordo: the combination of a production zone, no nearby homes and a welcoming municipality is rare, and even more so within the territory of Rome Capital.

The programming of Orion Club: what you can expect

The profile is recognizable and made up of a few recurring families. The first is that of international cult bands, groups with a long history and a loyal following that play few dates in Italy and that in a hall of thousands of seats wouldn't reach a sellout, while in a mid-sized venue they reach it without effort. The second is that of rising Italian artists, those who have outgrown the small club but don't yet have the commercial strength of the arena: for them this is the hall of the step up. The third is that of themed nights and productions by outside companies, which rent the space and build an event with their own artists and their own entry criteria. The fourth is that of the real dance nights, with music selection and a program that goes on until late at night. The fifth, less visible, is that of the private and corporate events mentioned earlier.

To give a concrete and verifiable example of what kind of names this hall touches, the Roman calendar includes the date of Belle and Sebastian in concert in Ciampino, the Scottish band that is a reference of British indie pop, with a date announced as the only one in the center-south for the Italian tour. It is exactly the textbook case described above: a band with 30 years of history, a devoted audience and numbers that in Italy are concentrated in a few cities. It should be taken for what it is, that is an example of the band served and not a permanent snapshot of the program, because by the time of reading that date may already have passed and been replaced by others.

One thing nobody tells you about Orion Club

The thing almost nobody puts in writing concerns the relationship between the end of the concert and the end of the night, and the fact that they almost never coincide. In halls of this kind the ticketed event occupies a portion of the night: doors opening early in the evening, a possible opening act, the main concert, and then a long tail of recorded music that can go on for hours. The public divides accordingly into two populations that don't resemble each other. There are those who arrive early to stand under the stage, leave as soon as the encore ends and take the car again while the hall is still full. And there are those who arrive when the concert is ending, pay a different entrance and stay until late at night. The two populations cross for barely half an hour, and anyone who doesn't know it goes through a moment of disorientation: the hall seems to empty and then fills up again with different faces.

The practical consequence is that you have to decide in advance which of the two nights you want to attend, because the logistical choices are opposite. Anyone aiming for the concert can think about the train or the bus for the trip there and still has some margin on the return if they leave right away. Anyone aiming for the late-night part must arrange the return by car or by the night line, because the rail and metro service at that hour no longer exists. Getting this assessment wrong is the most common way to ruin a night: finding yourself at two in the morning in an industrial area, without a car and with no idea where the bus passes, is a situation that is solved only with a lot of patience or an unplanned expense.

My advice for visiting Orion Club

The main advice is to treat the night as a small trip and not as a neighborhood outing, because that is exactly what it is. It means four concrete things.

The first concerns timing. You have to look at the door opening time written in the communication for the individual date, not the start time of the concert, and arrive at least half an hour early if you want to be at the front, at least an hour early if the date is sold out. The entrance check at a hall of this size takes time, and the line forms outdoors.

The second concerns the car. If you arrive by car, it's best to work out beforehand where you intend to leave it, because the industrial area has spaces but also prohibitions, and a ticket found on the windshield at the exit is the worst possible memory of a concert. It's also best to park in a position that lets you leave without complicated maneuvers: at the end of the night hundreds of cars move at the same time on the same streets, and the difference between those who get out in five minutes and those who get out in 40 depends almost entirely on where they put the car on arrival.

The third concerns money and documents. Entrances to a hall of this type can require named tickets, which means the name on the ticket must match the ID of the person entering. Bringing ID is therefore mandatory and not optional, and for some nights proof of being of age with a check at the gate is also required. It's also best to carry a reasonable amount of cash, because on crowded nights the electronic payment systems at the refreshment counters can slow down.

The fourth concerns food. Around the venue there is no fabric of restaurants and bars open in the evening: it's a production zone, and at that hour it is deserted. Anyone counting on dining on site will find in front of them the venue's own offering, designed for quick consumption and not for a meal. The smart solution is to eat beforehand, and it can be turned into an added value: the center of Ciampino, or better still one of the towns of the Castelli Romani above the hall, offers trattorias and fraschette where you eat well and spend little. Going up to Frascati (RM), Marino (RM) or Grottaferrata (RM) for dinner and then coming down to the concert is an itinerary that takes 20 minutes by car and completely changes the tone of the night.

How to buy tickets for Orion Club

On this point the rule holds for all halls that host productions by different companies, and holds particularly sharply here: there is no single sales channel valid for all events. Each date is produced by a different party, and each producer chooses its own presale circuit. The official website of the venue in fact points to several ticketing platforms, among which Vivaticket and DICE appear, and to these are added the national circuits used from time to time by the promoters. The event page, not the venue's page, is the document that indicates where to buy.

The right method is always the same, in three steps. First: find the exact date and the exact name of the artist or event. Second: look for the official announcement for that date, on the venue's website or on the promoter's channels. Third: buy through the channel listed there, and read the conditions before paying, because those lines hold the information that really matters, namely if the ticket is registered to a name, if it can be transferred, if there is an age limit, if entry requires an association membership, and if there are different types of entry among floor, privé area and table.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

The fact in question is the relationship between this hall and the airport next to it, and the way that proximity has shaped the whole area. Ciampino has had an airfield for over a century: born in the first decades of the 20th century as an aviation field, it was for a long time the capital's main airport, until the opening of the Fiumicino airport in the 1960s took away its role as Rome's main gateway. From that moment Ciampino specialized in a different kind of traffic, with very strong growth starting in the 2000s tied to low-cost airlines.

What does that have to do with a concert venue? It matters in three ways, all of them concrete. The first is urban planning: the presence of the airport has generated around itself a band of productive activities, warehouses, car rental agencies and depots, exactly the kind of fabric where a show hangar can operate without creating conflicts with residents. The second is noise: in an area already subject to the passage of aircraft, the collective threshold of acoustic tolerance is different from that of a residential neighborhood, and a hall that produces high volumes until late at night finds here a location that elsewhere would be unsustainable. The third is mobility: the road infrastructure built to serve the airport, with the direct link to the Raccordo and the wide-section roads, is the same one the concert audience uses to arrive and to leave, and it explains why a venue so far from the center is nonetheless easy to reach.

The right photo to take at Orion Club

I start from a premise that holds for all concert halls and that matters more here than elsewhere: inside, during the event, photography is regulated by the organizer and the artist, not by the photographer. Many international productions ban cameras with interchangeable lenses, some limit filming to the first songs, others prohibit video recording altogether. The hall staff apply the instructions they have received, and arguing at the door is pointless. The common-sense rule is to read the conditions in the announcement for the date and, if there are no indications, to stick to a phone without flash.

That said, the photo I recommend looking for is not the one of the stage, which everyone takes and which almost always comes out badly because the backlight from the stage lights burns the exposure. The right photo is the one of the floor seen from the back of the hall, slightly raised if you find something to lean on: you frame the mass of the audience from behind, the beam of light cutting the air above the heads and, in the background, the small figure of the artist. It is an image that tells the story of the place much better than a blurry close-up, because it conveys the scale of the hall, the height of the ceiling and the exposed structure that are the real visual identity of this hangar. Technically it works even with a phone, as long as you keep the device steady by resting it on something and let the stage light do the work.

The second photo I recommend is taken outside, and before going in. At sunset, from the forecourt, the combination of low hangars, wide sky and lit signs gives an image of productive outskirts that is exactly the opposite of the Roman postcard, and for that very reason it works. If you are lucky enough to be there while a plane passes on its approach to the airport, with its landing lights on above the warehouse roofs, you take home the image that sums up the whole story of this piece of territory: the flight, the hangar, the music. It is a photo that no guide suggests and that tells the story of the place better than any description.

Some important events that happened here in history

The history of this address reads in three layers, and each one corresponds to a season of Italian entertainment.

The first layer is that of the big discotheque of the 1990s. In that decade Italy lived the most intense phase of its dance culture, with large venues located outside the built-up areas, reachable only by car, able to move thousands of people every weekend. The NRG in Ciampino belonged to that season and was one of its reference points for the southeast quadrant of Rome and for the Castelli. The phenomenon involved the whole peninsula and was also a matter of social custom: the out-of-town discotheque was the collective rite of a generation, with everything that came with it in terms of night-time travel and public debate about road safety.

The second layer is that of crisis and transformation. Starting from the early 2000s the model of the big Italian discotheque got into difficulty for converging reasons: rising costs, tougher rules on capacity and safety, changes in music consumption, competition from different forms of entertainment and, not least, the tightening of checks on night driving. Many dance hangars closed or changed use. The one in Ciampino followed the same curve, and the end of the earlier venture left for a period a space with no function, as happened to dozens of similar structures all over Italy.

The third layer is that of the reopening with its current identity, which shifts the center of gravity from dancing to concerts and turns the hall into a multipurpose container. This change, which took place during the 2010s, puts the venue in the small group of mid-sized Roman halls, and connects it directly with the national tour circuit. From that moment the address appears in the calendars of Italian tours, that is, in the collective document that every fall lists the cities and halls touched by artists traveling around the peninsula.

Who has played at Orion Club

On this point I prefer to be precise rather than generous, because the temptation to lengthen the list with big names is strong and always leads to writing wrong things. A multi-year program of a hall this size contains hundreds of evenings, and without the complete archive of posters no list is reliable. What can be said with certainty concerns the category of artists that a hall of this size hosts, and on that the available documentation is clear.

The first category is foreign bands with a cult audience. They are acts with a long career, often in alternative rock, indie, post punk or electronic, that don't fill the arenas in Italy but have a passionate following willing to travel. The date of Belle and Sebastian in Ciampino falls into this category, a Glasgow band born in the mid-1990s around the songs of Stuart Murdoch and become a reference point of British indie pop with albums like If You Are Feeling Sinister, The Boy with the Arab Strap and Dear Catastrophe Waitress. An act with that profile, in Italy, hits few cities and picks halls of exactly this size: it is the perfect textbook case.

The second category is Italian artists in the middle phase of their careers, those who have moved on from clubs of a few hundred seats and have not yet reached the arenas. For them this hall is a rung on the ladder of growth, and the stop here is often documented in tour calendars as the Rome date or as the date for the Rome area, a distinction that matters because a date in Ciampino also serves the catchment area of the Castelli and the south of the province.

The third category is the names of the music selection, that is, those who work the console on dance nights. It is the least publicly documented part, because nights of this kind are announced at short notice and archived even less, but it is quantitatively the largest in the history of the venue, and it has its roots in the tradition of the place as the dance hall of the quadrant.

Parking, accessibility and services at Orion Club

Parking is the most concrete competitive advantage of this location, and it is also the reason many people prefer a date here to a date in the center. The area is productive, the streets are wide and the paved surfaces available in the evening hours, when the businesses of the area have closed, are many. This doesn't mean you park in front of the door: on sold-out nights the nearest forecourt fills up early and parking spreads to the neighboring streets, with walks of a few hundred meters. The usual recommendation applies: respect the signs even where it seems they don't matter at all, don't block the driveways of the hangars, and remember that at the end of the night the exodus happens all at once.

On accessibility the structural strength is the single-level floor plan, without fixed bleachers, which eliminates the main problem of tiered halls. The concrete arrangements, however, depend on the setup of the individual event: position of the reserved spots, dedicated route, companion, equipped restrooms and booking procedures are things to be agreed in advance with the venue management and with the organizer of the date. The right channel is the phone number during office hours or the general email address of the venue, and the call should be made a few days ahead, not the same evening.

For on-site services the venue provides refreshment counters, a coat check and the privé area with table service, the latter by reservation and with conditions that vary depending on the event. The management lists dedicated contacts for table bookings and for requests to rent the hall for parties, conventions and private events. The useful references are the phone, during office hours, +39 06 89013645 and +39 06 54220870, and the official website orionliveclub.com, where you also find the contact form and the links to the social channels on which the announcements for the individual dates are published.

Where to sleep nearby

The area offers a particular kind of accommodation, tied more to the airport than to the venue: around the Ciampino airport there is a concentration of properties designed for people with an early morning or late evening flight, with shuttles and rates that are competitive compared with central Rome. For those coming from outside the region for a concert it is a logical solution, because it lets you stay a few minutes from the hall and leave again without crossing the city. The second option, nicer but less convenient at night, is to sleep in one of the towns of the Castelli Romani: Frascati (RM), Grottaferrata (RM), Marino (RM) and Castel Gandolfo (RM) have a widespread offering and a setting that is worth the stay in itself. The third is to sleep in Rome and treat the evening as a trip out, but allowing for the night-time return. The three choices are not equivalent, and the deciding factor is always the same: what time you plan to leave the hall.

What's around Orion Club, between Ciampino and the Castelli Romani

Those who come for a concert tend to consider Ciampino a mere address, and they are wrong, because within a radius of a few kilometers lies one of the most interesting areas of the province of Rome. It is worth arriving a few hours early, or staying the next day.

The most obvious direction is the hills. The Castelli Romani occupy the volcanic complex of the Colli Albani and include a ring of towns overlooking the craters and the Rome basin: the Castelli Romani Park is the protected area that holds them together and that protects woods, lakes and volcanic cones. Frascati (RM) is the best known, with its late Renaissance and Baroque villas and the terrace that looks over the capital. Grottaferrata (RM) holds the Greek-rite abbey founded in the 11th century, one of the most singular places in all of Lazio. Marino (RM) is the town of wine and of the grape festival. Castel Gandolfo (RM) overlooks Lake Albano (RM) and keeps the complex of the papal villas. Going down Via Appia you meet Albano Laziale (RM), with its Roman remains absorbed into the urban fabric, Ariccia (RM) with Palazzo Chigi and the monumental bridge, and Nemi (RM), overlooking its small volcanic lake.

The opposite direction leads toward Rome, and here too the distance is minimal. The Aqueducts Park is a few kilometers away, with the sequence of arches crossing the meadow, one of the most photographed landscapes of the Roman outskirts. A little further on begins the Appian Way Park, with the consular road, the tombs and the Villa of the Quintilii, the most imposing imperial residence in the suburbs. Still in the quadrant, Cinecittà Studios opens its sound stages and permanent sets to the public, and the Caffarella Park closes off, on the city side, the system of green that accompanies Via Appia.

For those who stay in the logic of music and want to understand where this hall sits in the Roman landscape, the useful comparison is with the Atlantico Live Club Roma in Eur, which occupies the band immediately above, and with the smaller clubs of the center and of Pigneto, from Monk to Largo Venue to Lanificio159. They are three different sizes of the same trade, and a fan who follows the Roman scene ends up sooner or later crossing all of them.

Quick questions about Orion Club

Where exactly is it?

At Viale John Fitzgerald Kennedy 52, in Ciampino, in the province of Rome, in the productive area of Gregna Sant'Andrea, a short distance from exits 21 and 22 of the Grande Raccordo Anulare.

What was it called before?

In the 1990s the space hosted one of the busiest discotheques of the southeast Rome sector and of the Castelli, known as NRG in Ciampino. The current venue was born from the conversion of that building to a different use, centered on live concerts.

What is the capacity?

The owners communicate the surface area, about 1,200 square meters of floor over two main halls plus privé and space for after shows, rather than a fixed number of people. The figures circulating on industry portals don't match one another, and the reason is that the authorized capacity depends on the setup approved event by event. The figure that applies to a specific night is the one given in the official announcement for that date.

What kind of nights are held?

Concerts by Italian and foreign artists, music selection nights that continue long after the live set ends, events produced by outside companies, and private rentals for parties, conventions and company presentations. The model declared by the owners is that of live clubbing in the European style.

Where do you buy tickets?

On the presale channel indicated by the company that produces the individual date. The official site links to several ticketing platforms, among them Vivaticket and DICE, and the circuits change from one event to the next. There is no single channel valid for the whole program.

Can you buy them on the night?

Only if the organizer provides an on-site box office and if tickets remain. For high-demand dates the presale sells out weeks in advance.

Do you need an ID?

When the ticket is registered to a name, yes, and it is mandatory. For some nights there is also an age check at the door. The conditions are written in the announcement for the individual date.

Do you need a membership card?

It depends on the event. Some nights in Italy operate under a membership regime, with a registration fee plus a contribution for the night. When that happens, the official announcement says so and explains how to sign up.

How do you get there by public transport?

By bus 551 from the Anagnina terminus of metro line A, or by regional train from Roma Termini to Ciampino station and then a short stretch by bus or taxi. Routes and frequencies should be checked the same day on the transport operator's channels.

And getting back at night?

The venue points to the night line N1 departing from Via Sette Metri toward the Anagnina metro station, with regular runs in the middle hours of the night, and from Anagnina the continuation toward central Rome. The realistic alternatives remain your own car or a taxi booked in advance, because the regional rail service only resumes in the early hours of the morning.

Is there parking?

The area is productive and in the evening hours offers ample parking on the street and in the forecourts, although on sold-out nights the nearest areas fill up early and you may end up walking a few hundred meters. It is one of the main reasons why many people choose to come here by car.

Is the hall accessible to people with disabilities?

The floor plan is at ground level, without fixed bleachers, which makes access much simpler. Reserved spots, dedicated route and booking procedures, however, depend on the setup of the individual event and must be agreed in advance with the management and with the organizer.

What is the phone number for information?

During office hours the contacts are +39 06 89013645 and +39 06 54220870. The official site is orionliveclub.com and also hosts the contact form.

What is the difference compared with Atlantico?

They are two halls of different size in two different parts of the city. The Atlantico Live Club Roma is in Eur, within the municipal territory of Rome, and works with higher numbers. The Ciampino hall occupies the band immediately below and is also built around the night-time continuation of the evening. An artist chooses one or the other based on the expected sales and the type of audience.

Is it worth having dinner nearby?

Around the venue, which is in a productive area, there is no food offering in the evening. The best choice is to eat first in the center of Ciampino or head up to one of the towns of the Castelli Romani, about 20 minutes away by car.

The verdict is that the hall should be taken for what it is, without asking it for the appeal of a historic theater or the intimacy of a neighborhood club. It is a machine for concerts and long nights, built inside a hangar, placed at the exact point where the noise bothers no one, the parking really exists and the hill of the Castelli begins a few curves away. Those looking for the atmosphere of the historic center will stay cold. Those who want to hear a mid-level artist well, at a reasonable price, with the chance to stay late without moving, will find here exactly what they need. And those who arrive a few hours early with the desire to look around will find that the surroundings, among extinct volcanoes, lakes, Greek abbeys and Roman aqueducts, are worth the trip by themselves.

Frequently asked questions about Orion Club

Where exactly is Orion Club?

Orion Club is at Viale John Fitzgerald Kennedy 52, in Ciampino, in the province of Rome, in the productive area of Gregna Sant'Andrea, a short distance from exits 21 and 22 of the Grande Raccordo Anulare. Ciampino is an independent municipality, not part of the territory of Rome.

How do you buy tickets for Orion Club?

There is no single sales channel valid for all Orion Club events: each date is produced by a different company, and each promoter chooses its own presale circuit. The venue's official site therefore links to several different ticketing platforms depending on the event.

What was Orion Club called before?

The space that today hosts Orion Club hosted in the 1990s one of the busiest discotheques of the southeast Rome sector and of the Castelli, known as NRG in Ciampino, a reference point for the out-of-town Saturday night of an entire generation.

Is there parking at Orion Club?

Yes, parking is the most concrete competitive advantage of Orion Club: the area is productive, the streets are wide and the paved surfaces available in the evening hours are many, even if on sold-out nights finding a spot near the entrance is not always a given.

Can you take photos during concerts at Orion Club?

It depends on the event: inside Orion Club, photography during the event is regulated by the organizer and the artist, not by the photographer. Many international productions ban cameras with interchangeable lenses, some limit filming to the first songs, others prohibit it altogether.

Is Orion Club just a discotheque?

No, the word discotheque tells only part of the reality of Orion Club, which the owners describe as a multitasking club conceived as a cultural container at 360 degrees, where art exhibitions and music of different genres live together in the same space.

How big is Orion Club?

Orion Club has a floor of about 1,200 square meters, spread over two main halls, with the addition of a privé and a space used for after shows, four rooms with different functions inside the same venue.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences. For an evening organized in the Rome area with a licensed tour guide, or for the logistical management of groups arriving for a concert, the starting point is the TourLeaderPro contact page. Tour operators building music packages on the capital and the Castelli Romani will find the consulting service in the section dedicated to tour operators.

Planning a trip to Rome? The English guides for visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com. Those who want to understand how to get around among metro, buses and regional trains will find the explanation in the guide to Rome public transport, while those organizing their stay around an evening event will find useful the overview of things to do in Rome.