Italy Train Travel

Train travel in Italy is cheap compared to surrounding countries. But there’s a catch: major rail lines in Italy tend to have a vast ridership and seats during “rush hours” can be difficult to find on Italian trains. We can offer tips that’ll get you over this hurdle. But first, the basics on train travel in Italy.

Italy Train Routes Map

Traveling by train is usually the best option for visiting large and medium-sized cities. Where can you go on the Italian train? Check this Italy Rail Map on Europe Travel.

Types of Trains in Italy

We’ll list the types of trains by cost and speed, expensive and fast trains first.

Eurostar (ES or Treni Eurostar Italia)
Italy’s premier train, not to be confused with the Eurostar that plies the English channel (the Italian Eurostar was first to claim the name). Seat reservations on Eurostar Italia are manditory. Eurostar travels swiftly between major Italian cities.

Intercity and the newer Intercity Plus trains
Relatively fast trains that run the length of Italy, stopping at the large cities. First and second class service is available. First class coaches offer slightly better seats and are generally less populated. Seat reservations are compulsary on the Intercity Plus trains, and the fee is included in the ticket price.

Regionale (Regional Trains)
These are the local trains, often running around work and school schedules. They are cheap and usually reliable–but seats can be hard to find on major routes. Many regional trains have only second class seats, but if available, consider first class, asking for Prima Classe, per favore, it’s less likely to be full.
Finding your destination on the train schedules

In every train station there are both white and yellow/orange train schedules displayed. For departing trains, check the yellow/orange colored poster. It will tell you the route, the major intermediate stops, the the times the trains run. Be sure to check the notes column; expect schedule changes for weekends and holidays (there are generally fewer trains that run on weekends).

Buying an Italian Train Ticket

There are a number of ways to buy a train ticket in Italy.

* You can go to a ticket window at the station equipped with the time and destination of the train you want to take, the number of tickets you need, the class of the ticket (primo or secundo).
* You can use a ticket machine if the station has them. These are pretty easy to use, and you can avoid long lines at the ticket window.
* You can buy a ticket from a travel agent if they’re equipped to handle train tickets. An extra fee will usually be added to the price.

You can also buy train tickets online and see train schedules online at Trenitalia.

If I’m traveling by train using point-to-point tickets along the way, I usually check the station I’m arriving at for trains to my next destination. If it’s a popular destination, I might buy a ticket right then to be assured of getting the train I want.

Note that a ticket buys you transportation on a train, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a seat on that train. If you find that your train is crowded and you can’t find a seat in second class, you may try to find a conductor and ask if your ticket can be upgraded to first class.
Boarding your Train

Once you have a ticket, you can head out to your train. In Italian, the tracks are called binari. In smaller stations where the trains go through the station you’ll have to go underground using the sottopassagio or underpassage to get to a track that isn’t Binario uno or track number one. Larger stations like Milano Centrale, where the trains pull into the station rather than passing through, you’ll see the trains head-on, with signs on each track indicating the next expected train and its departure time.

But before you go to your train–validate that train ticket! Just before you board your train, find the yellow box like the one shown in the upper right and insert the end of your ticket. This prints the time and date of the first use of your ticket, and makes it valid for the journey. There are stiff fines for not validating your ticket. If you forget, try pleading that you’re just a dumb tourist. It has worked before, but it works less and less as time passes.

Once you find your train, just board it. You will probably have to show your ticket to a conductor once during your journey–so keep it where you can get to it. Usually there are racks above the seats for luggage. Sometimes there are dedicated shelves near the ends of each coach for your larger baggage.

It’s customary to greet fellow passengers when you sit down. A simple buon giorno will do nicely. If you want to know if a seat is vacant, simply say Occupato? or E libero?.

At Your Destination

Train stations are bustling places, especially in large cities. Be careful about your baggage and wallet.

Most train stations are centrally located and surrounded by hotels. It’s easy to adapt a carefree approach to traveling, especially in the off season.

Enjoy your Italian train travel.

1. Rome – Roma
Rome is the capital of modern Italy. Rome is full of history everywhere you look. It has many ancient monuments, interesting medieval churches, beautiful fountains, museums, and Renaissance palaces. Modern Rome is a bustling and lively city and has some excellent restaurants and nightlife. The Vatican and St. Peter’s are also found in Rome.

2. Venice – Venezia
Venice is a unique city built on water in the middle of a lagoon. Venice is one of Italy’s most beautiful and romantic cities as well as one of the most popular for visitors to Italy. The heart of Venice is Piazza San Marco with its magnificent church. There are many museums, palaces, and churches to visit and wandering along Venice’s canals is interesting. Venice is in the northeast of Italy and historically was a bridge between East and West.

3. Florence – Firenze
Florence is one of the most important Renaissance architectural and art centers. Its Duomo and Baptistery are magnificent but crowded with tourists as is their large piazza. Florence has several interesting museums with many famous paintings and sculptures. There are also Medici palaces and gardens. Florence is in Tuscany.

4. Milan – Milano
Milan, one of Europe’s richest cities, is known for stylish shops, galleries, and restaurants and has a faster pace of life than most Italian cities. It also has a rich artistic and cultural heritage. Its Duomo, with its beautiful marble facade, is magnificent. La Scala is one of the world’s most famous opera houses.

5. Naples – Napoli
Naples is one of Italy’s most vibrant cities. It lies on the coast south of Rome and is the most important city in southern Italy. Naples has recently undergone some renovation but still retains much of its old character. It holds many historical and artistic treasures.

6. Verona
Verona is known for the story of Romeo and Juliet and for its Roman Arena, the third largest in Italy and the venue for a top opera festival. Verona has a good medieval center, Roman remains, and an interesting castle complex. It’s the fourth most visited city in Italy and well worth a stop on a northern Italy travel itinerary.

7. Turin – Torino
Turin, host of the 2006 Winter Olympics, is a major cultural hub with excellent museums, elegant shops, and good restaurants. There are also some very nice examples of baroque architecture and historic palaces. Turin has many historic cafes, artisan workshops, and arcades. Turin is in the northwest of Italy, between the Po River and the foothills of the Alps.

8. Bologna
Bologna is known for its beauty, wealth, cuisine, and left-wing politics. Its streets are lined with beautiful arcades, making it a good place to walk even in the rain. It has one of Europe’s oldest universities and a nice medieval center. There are several attractive squares, lined with buildings with nice porticoes. Bologna is the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy.

9. Perugia
Perugia is a very cosmopolitan city and home to two universities. It hosts a world-famous jazz festival in the summer and its University for Foreigners is a great place to learn Italian. It’s a walled city on a hilltop with great views over the valley and has several important monuments and a good central square. Its history goes back to the ninth century BC. Perugia is in the center of Italy and is the capital of the region of Umbria.

10. Genoa – Genova
Genoa, on the northwest coast of Italy, is Italy’s principal seaport. Genoa was a 2004 European Culture Capital; money flowed into the port city made famous by Columbus and now it’s a better place than ever to visit. Genoa has a fascinating aquarium, an interesting port area, and a historic center said to be the largest medieval quarter in Europe, with a wealth of churches, palaces, and museums.

The Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater was begun by Vespasian, inaugurated by Titus in 80 A.D. and completed by Domitian. Located on marshy land between the Esquiline and Caelian Hills, it was the first permanent amphitheater to be built in Rome. Its monumental size and grandeur as well as its practical and efficient organization for producing spectacles and controlling the large crowds make it one of the great architectural monuments achieved by the ancient Romans.

The amphitheater is a vast ellipse with tiers of seating for 50,000 spectators around a central elliptical arena. Below the wooden arena floor, there was a complex set of rooms and passageways for wild beasts and other provisions for staging the spectacles. Eighty walls radiate from the arena and support vaults for passageways, stairways and the tiers of seats. At the outer edge circumferential arcades link each level and the stairways between levels.

The three tiers of arcades are faced by three-quarter columns and entablatures, Doric in the first story, Ionic in the second, and Corinthian in the third. Above them is an attic story with Corinthian pilasters and small square window openings in alternate bays. At the top brackets and sockets carry the masts from which the velarium, a canopy for shade, was suspended.

The construction utilized a careful combination of types: concrete for the foundations, travertine for the piers and arcades, tufa infill between piers for the walls of the lower two levels, and brick-faced concrete used for the upper levels and for most of the vaults.

The Colosseum was designed to hold 50,000 spectators, and it had approximately eighty entrances so crowds could arrive and leave easily and quickly.

The plan is a vast ellipse, measuring externally 188 m x 156 m (615 ft x 510 ft), with the base of the building covering about 6 acres. Vaults span between eighty radial walls to support tiers of seating and for passageways and stairs.

The facade of three tiers of arches and an attic story is about 48.5 m (158 ft) tall — roughly equivalent to a 12-15 story building.

In remote times, going back to the Bronze Age and dated between the 18th and 17th centuries B.C. there was the great maritime migration of the Arcadians from the Aegean towards Southern Italy. Guided by their mythical king Oenotro, these people were called Oenotrians.

From their expansion and mixings with the local populations, and with some complicated integrations, derived the Ausonians (Ausones), the Chones, the Morgetes, of course, the Itali, and the Siculians.

The Latins probably also descended from the Oenotrians, but instead were pushed a bit further North. It has been shown that between the 16th and the 15th centuries B.C. several populations speaking diverse Indoeuropean idioms had already penetrated in Italy.

These populations represent the result of the overlapping and in many ways a blending of a first wave of Indoeuropea in Italy with an existing non-Indoeuropean sub-layer like that very ancient Iberian-Caucasian, who survived the presence, even in the Roman era both in Eastern Sardenia as well as Eastern Sicily, where one refers to the Sicanians, and like the Aegean-Asianic of the Pelasgic type.

The Pelasgi were perhaps the first inhabitants of the Palatine, the hill on which Rome would later rise, and perhaps the very ancient town called “square Rome” is attributed to them. In addition, the ancient God of the Roman hill Janiculum, Janus, came from Tessalia. Although tradition attributes him Indoeuropean origins, some historians say he has Pelasgic origins, with his name coming from Inuus Pelasgic.

Therefore the Central-Southern part of Italy outlines a scenario very similar to that verified previously in Greece, where the Pelasgi, an antique Mediterranean population who lived in Tessalia, the Peloponnesian, the Caria, and quite probably in Crete and Cyprus in addition to the many other small islands of the Aegean, overlapped or fused with their arrival the Indoeuropean Greeks.

The Arcadi, originally from Peloponnesia, speaking an ancient Greek language, and therefore Indoeuropean, is the perfect example of this fusion between Indoeuropean people and pre-Indoeuropean populations, given that Peloponnesia is the region in which the Pelasgic presence lasted the longest.

The Itali lived in the southern part of present-day Calabria, that is, within the “toe” of the boot called Italy. Their name came from Vitulus, meaning veal or calf, since the area was rich with bovine, and perhaps the Itali took the name symbolically since it identified them with their land. But in the times of the Magna Grecia, following the Greek colonization of the majority of their territory, the coastal regions were renamed Italoi, the Greek word for Vitulus.

And so the name “Italoi” was inherited by the Romans upon conquering this territory which extended all the way down to the southernmost tip of the peninsula. Although for some time the land had been conquered by second-wave Indoeuropean populations such as a type of Sabellians called Bruttii.

From this, the name “Italy” was extended by the Romans first to cover Southern Italy and later to include the entire peninsula.

Many tales about contacts between the Aegean world and the Italic world make references to more recent migrations than the first Arcadian immigration, between the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. around the period of the Trojan war, in 1180 B.C.

During that period, the late Bronze Age, almost half of the Italic peninsula was made up of migrants from various places within the Aegean-Anatolic area.

This half consisted partly of people speaking Indoeuropean idioms, like Arcadians of Evandro, of whom the presence on the Roman hills of the Palatine would be dated to 60 years before the Trojan war or, like Ulysses’ Achei and Enea’s Trojans, immediately after the Trojan war.

The other half was made up of Mediterranean populations very similar to the Pelasgi but not speaking proper Indoeuropean languages and identified as Maritime Populations, such as Sardens or Shardana, meaning Sardanioi, that is, the Sardinians, and the Trs or Tursa, meaning the Tyrosine, that is the Tyrrhenians who perhaps originally came from Lydia in Asia Minor or from the Aegean island of Lemno, from which the Etruscans or Tusci come.