The New Metro Station Under the Fori

Rome does not open metro stations often. Digging anything in this city means finding something, and finding something means stopping, which is why line C has taken decades and why every Roman has a joke about it.

In December 2025 two more stations opened: Porta Metronia, and Colosseo / Fori Imperiali, where line C meets line B at the bottom of our neighbourhood. I went in the first week, the way everybody in Monti did, and I would like to persuade you to arrive early for a train.

It is a museum that happens to have trains in it

This is the part that surprises people. The station was finished as an exhibition space, developed with the archaeological park of the Colosseum and the university, and the route from the platform up to the street runs through a series of display areas covering roughly two thousand years of what was found while the hole was being dug.

And a great deal was found. The excavation turned up wells from the republican period and the bath suite of a Roman house datable to somewhere between the first century before Christ and the first century after it. Rather than crate all of it off to a store, they built the station around the telling of it.

The effect is genuinely strange and rather moving. You come down a modern escalator with your shopping and you are walking past the private bath of somebody who lived here when the Forum was still working.

Most stations are somewhere to leave as fast as possible. This is somewhere to stand still for ten minutes, and I would give it those ten minutes.

Where it is, and what it means practically

The station sits at the Colosseum end of Via dei Fori Imperiali, so from Monti it is a walk downhill of a few minutes, and it interchanges with the line B station that has always been there.

For anyone staying in this neighbourhood, the practical picture is now this. Cavour, on line B, is at the bottom of Monti and one stop from Termini, which is where both airport connections arrive. Colosseo / Fori Imperiali gives you line B and line C in the same place, a short walk from the same front door. A single BIT ticket costs €1.50 and stays valid for 100 minutes across metro, bus and tram.

Which is to say: you will still walk almost everywhere from here, because that is the point of the address. But on the day your legs have had enough, there are now two lines rather than one at the bottom of the hill.

How I would use it

Walk down in the morning through the neighbourhood, along the Fori, to the Colosseum. See what you came to see. Then, instead of climbing back up in the afternoon heat, go into the station, spend a while in the exhibition areas where nobody else is bothering to look, and come home on the train.

That is the sequence I would recommend to anyone staying with us, and it costs a euro fifty.

One honest note

It is new, and new things in Rome settle slowly. Signage, opening arrangements and which entrances are in use can all change. If you are planning something around it, check on the day rather than trusting a page written in August.

Everything else about getting around from here, including both airports with checked prices, is in my transport guide, and the walking times from our door are in the guide to Monti.