Site opens for bookings between 1 July and 30 September but tickets are likely to be snapped up quickly.

Rome has reopened the booking system for the Mausoleum of Augustus - the tomb of Rome's first emperor - which reopened to the public this spring after 14 years.

Tickets to visit the recently-restored site, the largest circular funerary monument of the ancient world, can now be booked from 1 July until 30 September.

Announcing the news today, Rome mayor Virginia Raggi recalled that residents of the Italian capital can visit the mausoleum for free until the end of this year.

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When tickets first became available the week before Christmas, via an online booking system, all places were snapped up until 21 April, the day of Rome's 2,774th birthday.

On its opening day, 1 March, the city announced that more tickets would be made available to visit the mausoleum until 30 June. However such was the demand that tickets sold out again, in less than 24 hours.

The reopening of the ancient site, which was off-limits for much of the last 80 years, followed a major restoration financed largely by Italian telecommunications company TIM, in a project that began under former Rome mayor Ignazio Marino.

• Rome's Mausoleum of Augustus to reopen after 14 years

In addition to more than €6 million in sponsorship from TIM, the restoration of the 13,000-sqm mausoleum was funded with around €4 million from the city and Italy's culture ministry.

The restructuring works at the 2,049-year-old brick and travertine site included stabilising walls and ceilings and adding new stairs and suspended walkways.

A brief history of the Mausoleum of Augustus

Constructed in 28 BC, the mausoleum was intended for Augustus and the imperial family, including his wife Livia, his sister Octavia and his sons-in-law Macellus and Agrippa, however it also houses the remains of emperors Tiberius, Claudius and Nerva, and the empresses Poppaea and Julia Domna.

By the end of the 10th century, the mausoleum had become largely buried under earth and overgrown with trees, and during the Renaissance era it passed through the ownership of several powerful Roman families who used it as a garden.

In the late 18th- and early 19th century the structure was used as a bull-fighting ring. A century later it became a concert hall.

In the late 1930s the surrounding mediaeval buildings were demolished by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as part of his plans to reorder Rome.

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In recent decades the vast monument has been the subject of numerous stalled renovation projects, one of which would have seen it ready in 2014 in time to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the death of Augustus.

The mausoleum is located near the corner of Via Ripetta and alongside the Ara Pacis museum, which contains Augustus’s Altare della Pace to commemorate the peace created by the emperor.

For full information, including booking details, see the Mausoleo di Augusto website.