The Italian Ministry of Culture announced that there will now be a €5 ticket to enter one of Rome’s most famous tourist attractions, the Pantheon.

The new ticketing system was announced in March by the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiulianowho said imposing a ticket to help preserve the hugely popular monument, where the painter Raphael is buried, was “a goal based on common sense”.

Problems, however, are not lacking. Tourists have reported that instructions on how and where to buy a ticket are not clear, and of course there are long queues in the hot summer sun outside the Pantheon.

According to New York Times, some visitors bought a ticket with an audio tour for 10 euros on an official site of the attraction, only to find out later that the reservation did not include the new entrance ticket, which is available from a different website of the Ministry of Culture or at the actual monument.

Additionally, some foreign credit cards have been declined on the online booking platform.

The new ticketing system carries with it the danger plaguing visitors to another popular Italian monument, the Colosseum: namely the rise of the ticket black market, where traders buy cheap tickets en masse and then resell them at exorbitant prices – and only make them available as part of an organized tour. Alfonsina Russo, the director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, told The Times that she filed a complaint about the ticketing system with Italian police last year.

Read more at monopoli.gr