Wax Museum Rome (Museo delle Cere)

Wax Museum Rome tickets: adults, children and the reduced prices

The Museo delle Cere doesn’t ask you to book. There’s a ticket office at the door, and the museum says a ticket bought online gets you in quickly, without a queue. Ours is the museum’s entry ticket, at €2, for a date you pick.

Children have prices of their own. Under one metre tall they don’t pay, and up to 1.40 m they pay the child ticket, €7 with us. Visitors with a disability and the person with them also get a reduced ticket, but the museum sells that one only at its own ticket office, so buy it there on the day.

Is the Wax Museum Rome included in the Turbopass or the Roma Pass?

The Turbopass includes the Wax Museum, so with that card you walk in on an entry you’ve already paid for. The Roma Pass works differently here: it gets you a reduced ticket, not one of its included entries.

The Omnia Card, Go City, the Rome Tourist Card and the Vatican City Pass don’t include the museum. If you’re carrying a Roma Pass, show it for the reduced price here, and none of its included entries gets used up; our guide to Roma Pass and Rome’s other city passes shows what each card covers, and the Turbopass page lists everything in that one.

Museo delle Cere opening hours: 9:00 to 21:00, every day

There’s no day off, Mondays included. The museum doesn’t publish a last entry time, so don’t leave it until a few minutes before closing.

It’s a small museum, and visitors put the visit at under an hour. With the doors open until 21:00, it works as an evening stop near Piazza Venezia, or as a short break between other sights.

Who’s in wax at the Wax Museum Rome: popes, Padre Pio and Obama

The figures come from history, literature, music, sport, cinema and art, and the Italian names stand next to international ones, so popes share the museum with a saint and a US president. John Paul II and Benedict XVI are here with Padre Pio, one of the museum’s religious figures, and Barack Obama has been on show since 8 December 2008.

Alberto Sordi, the actor, has stood here as the Marchese del Grillo since March 2009, and for children there are characters from Sleeping Beauty. The ticket sellers’ listings describe the rooms as nine themed areas, and they include a look at the workshop where the figures are made.

How the Wax Museum Rome ended up in Palazzo Colonna

Behind the rooms and the workshop is a circus entrepreneur’s idea. Fernando Canini opened the museum in 1958, and its first home was on Via di Porta Pinciana, under the name Museo delle celebrità.

Between 1969 and 1970 it moved to Palazzo Colonna, one of the largest and oldest private palaces in Rome. Work on the palace began in the 14th century, and the Colonna family lived there for eight centuries. The museum calls itself Italy’s first wax museum, modelled on Madame Tussauds in London and the Grévin in Paris.

Getting to the Wax Museum Rome from Piazza Venezia

The museum is a short walk from Piazza Venezia, so if you’re already in the centre you get there on foot. The entrance is at Piazza dei Santi Apostoli 68/A, where the square meets Via Quattro Novembre.