Travel in Italy

It's been fourteen years since we were last in Italy and...it's changed. I remember wandering through Rome and just popping into sites of interest like the Pantheon or St. Peter's. Maybe there was a short queue or even a cheap ticket, but it wasn't a thing. Now it is, and probably forevermore. 

The new tourism goes something like this:

Me, in my mind: Oh, I've got two hours tomorrow before our train, I wonder if we can go see ___ (insert some famous or semi-famous place name, most recently San Severo chapel in Naples).

Me, on a smart phone: 

1. Google for "San Severo chapel". 
2. Get a list of a bajillion links offering tours, skip the line tours, walking tours, audio guides, etc. 
3. Hunt around and try to find the "official" website, usually, with a *.it URL.
4. After 30 minutes, conclude that "maybe this is the official site" and click the link.
5. Click "Online tickets" or "Acquisire i biglietti" or something, and get a list of ticket prices. 
• San Severo tickets are listed for €10 adults, €8 for teens, and free for under-10s. Perfect...€28 for our family.
6. Click "Purchase tickets".
7. Click "Purchase now" or "Check availability" or something.
8. Get a screen that looks like this, showing available tickets in green. This one is from the Colosseum but you get the idea.

Me, in my mind (hopefully): Shout a few curse words in Italian. Consider that this can't be right, try again with a variation on the ticket, or the number, or the days.

9. Go back to Google and the bajillion links, and click on a few. 
10. Discover rather quickly that there is an option to take a walking tour "tomorrow" to San Severo (perfect) at 10 am (perfect) that includes a piece of pizza (uh, ok). 
11. The tour (with the piece of pizza) costs $68 per person.
12. We did not get to go to Capello San Severo.

That was Thursday. 

Today we left the house at 7:30 to walk over to the Colosseum, which opened at 9. We had a bit of a walk, but when we arrived the line for same-day tickets was about 200 meters long (we stepped it off, trying to estimate when we might reach the front). Tickets, if you reach the front, are €16 for adults and free for kids, which is maybe (?!?) a bit too cheap.

Anyway, at 9:45 we had moved about 20 meters, and by pacing off the distance and estimating the rate at which people were purchasing tickets we estimated two more hours to get to the front. Meanwhile, there were plenty of people standing near the back of the line offering "tours in English" or "skip the line"--prices seemed to be about €50 per adult and €20 for kids, and the hawkers seemed to have plenty of tickets available. We did not get to go into the Colosseum, though it's right there, so you can still take a photo from the outside.

Now, I understand the economics. There are too many tourists, even in October, chasing too few slots. The government sets ticket prices for heritage sites in order to make them accessible. But the demand is such that this price is far below the market-clearing price (which is apparently more like €50-70 per person per site). In response, local "businesses" attempt to buy ALL the tickets, using bots, manual online purchases, and human stooges standing in line to purchase anything left (the cynical version of this story has the stooge standing in line at 7 AM, purchasing a pile of tickets at 9, and then walking to the back of the line to sell them to tourists who are still 2-3 hours from the front. We also witnessed a brouhaha when, apparently, a local guy cut the line and managed to purchase a sheaf of tickets at 9:15.). Anyway, there is only so much the site agents are going to do to stop it--they are selling tickets, the intermediaries are selling tickets, the sites are sold out, even if a handful of tickets at weird times end up unused. It all feels kind of dirty, and it's frustrating as a tourist when the price is completely unpredictable and depends on when and from whom your purchase the secondary entry, or (at least at San Severo) which slice of pizza you want on the side, but it makes sense. And it's still frustrating.

And even with all that, we aren't deprived. We walked right into the Forum and had a good time reciting Shakespeare--Luke said "I forgot how good Antony's speech is"--and then we had pre-purchased tickets for the Pantheon, whose ticket system just launched a few months ago and which seems to include some anti-bot measures on the website.