Insider advice from an Italian who knows
This is another guide in the Discover Italy series, following on from Top Tips for Travelling Smart in Italy, but this time I wanted to focus properly on travelling by train, because over the years friends and colleagues heading off to Italy have asked me for advice, and it seems that quite a few people end up having a rough experience simply because nobody explained the small unwritten rules that make the whole system work. So this is my attempt to pass on what I have learned, the practical things as well as the stories behind them, so that your own time on Italian trains can be as enjoyable as mine usually is.
With part of my family in the north of Italy and part in the south, I have caught trains more times than I could possibly count, as a child travelling between north and south and as an adult returning again and again to visit the people I love. In those childhood days the trains were not fast at all, and some journeys took a whole day and sometimes stretched into a whole night, with all of us settling in for the long haul rather than expecting to simply arrive. But despite how much has changed between train travel back then and train travel now, there is still something about boarding a train, finding your seat by the window, sipping a coffee at a station bar early in the morning, or unwrapping a snack or a small lunch somewhere in the middle of a long journey, that I still find myself enjoying every single time.
Italy has two very different kinds of trains and understanding the difference will save you time, money and a fair amount of confusion. For the big city to city journeys, Milan to Florence, Florence to Rome, Rome down to Naples, you want the high speed networks, either Trenitalia's Frecce services or Italo, and these trains are fast, frequent and comfortable, genuinely one of the pleasures of travelling in Italy, watching the countryside blur past while you sip a coffee bought at the onboard bar or from the trolley.
For shorter hops, day trips and the smaller towns that most visitors never quite reach, the regional trains are usually your best option, and although they stop more often and take longer, they connect you to places that the high speed lines simply do not go near, including some of the loveliest coastal routes and historic little towns tucked away from the main tourist trail.
Over the years, with all our trips to Italy and Europe more generally, we have learned the hard lesson of arriving with large and heavy luggage, getting on the train, and only then discovering that all the large luggage storage is already full, leaving you with nowhere to put your bag. One trip in particular, and it was lucky for us that the journey itself was not too long, we had a nice seat booked, but once we managed to get onto a very full train there was simply no space left anywhere for our large suitcases, so in turns we had to stand at the carriage entrance holding onto our bags, which of course wanted to roll away on their wheels every time the train moved, while also keeping an eye out to make sure nobody could snatch them between stations.
Arrive at the station early, and position yourself as close as possible to the carriage you are booked into if you have a reserved seat, which is printed on your ticket, so you are among the first to board rather than fighting your way down a crowded corridor with a heavy case in tow. If you are travelling with more than one person, work out a simple system between you, one person climbing on board while the other passes the luggage straight up and into whatever space can be found.
Over the years we have also started to shrunk the size of our luggage, which makes the whole business a great deal easier. All of this said, if you are travelling in peak season or over a holiday period, no amount of careful planning will entirely save you, because at that point it really does come down to luck, which is one more reason we have come to prefer travelling outside the busiest times whenever we can.
If you know your major city to city dates in advance, book those high speed tickets as early as you can, ideally three to six months ahead if your travel dates are firm, because the cheapest fares disappear first and the difference in price can be considerable. This is when Eurail becomes convenient, as once you have purchased the appropriate plan you only pay for the seat reservation. Trenitalia's website and app are straightforward to use for buying, checking and changing your bookings, and the app is particularly handy for checking real-time platform information once you are actually at the station.
Regional trains work quite differently, and you can generally buy these tickets on the day, sometimes even from your phone as you are walking onto the platform, without paying much of a penalty for the lack of forward planning, which gives you a lovely amount of flexibility for those spontaneous day trips that so often turn out to be the best part of a visit to Italy.
One thing that catches almost every visitor out at some point is ticket validation. Paper regional tickets generally need to be validated before you board, usually by stamping them at one of the small yellow or green machines on the platform, while digital tickets bought through the app are automatically validated and need no such ritual, so if you are holding a paper regional ticket it is always worth checking whether it needs validating, because travelling without a validated ticket when one is required can mean an on the spot fine.
Italian stations, especially the large ones in cities like Roma Termini or Milano Centrale, can be busy and a little overwhelming if you are not expecting it, so it helps to arrive with a little time up your sleeve rather than rushing, and to keep an eye on the departure boards, since platform numbers are sometimes only confirmed shortly before the train leaves. Also, a quick walk around to familiarise yourself with the platform numbers and layout of the station helps. It pays to know your exact train number as well as your departure time, since city names on the board can sometimes refer to a train's final destination rather than every stop it makes along the way, and in cities with more than one major station it is worth double-checking which one your train actually departs from (or arrives at) before you book. High-speed trains typically have assigned seating as well, so do check your ticket for your carriage and seat number rather than simply taking whichever seat looks free, which is an easy mistake to make if you are more used to casual regional travel.
It is also worth understanding how the train itself is arranged and which direction it will be facing once it arrives, because in terminal stations a train may come in from one direction and leave in the other, so the idea of first class sitting at the head of the train does not always mean it will be the first carriage you actually see rolling in. What matters is the carriage number printed on your ticket, not simply which end of the train looks closest to you.
When we are not sure exactly where our carriage will end up, what we do is position ourselves somewhere around the middle of the platform, and then watch for the carriage numbers as the train comes in, so we can walk in the right direction once we know where we need to be. This matters more than people expect, because some Italian trains are very long, and if you happen to be standing at the very beginning of the platform while your booked carriage turns out to be right at the other end, you can find yourself having to run the length of the platform with your luggage in tow. Fast trains in particular do not stop for long at each station, so there is rarely time to wander the length of the platform once the doors have opened.
Information offices can be very helpful, but they can also feel a little confronting if you find yourself at a busy station without knowing quite where to look. If you are unsure where to go, look for the official Trenitalia customer service desk, the FrecciaDesk, or a station information point, and it is far better to go there early rather than leaving it until the last minute. Main stations have customer service points for information and assistance, and some also have tourist information desks nearby, though you should be prepared to be patient and to navigate long queues, especially in the big stations like Milan and Rome. Quite often you will be asked to take a ticket from a machine and wait for your number to be called before someone at a desk can answer your questions, so building that waiting time into your plans is well worth doing.
Train stations, particularly the large and busy ones, are also good territory for pickpockets and scammers, so it is worth keeping a close eye on your belongings at all times. If you do need help, it is always better to ask someone in uniform, one of the official station staff, or to make your way to an official information point, rather than accepting help offered by a stranger, however friendly they might seem.
We have been using the Eurail pass for years, because it suits the way we like to travel, often moving beyond Italy into neighbouring countries, and if you enjoy travelling first class on the fast trains, even with seat bookings, the Eurail pass makes the whole process wonderfully convenient. We have used it between France and England, England and Holland, France and Italy, Austria and Italy, and any number of other combinations over the years.
One trip in particular has stayed with me. We were in the north of Italy and decided on a whim to head over to Innsbruck in Austria, so we took a fast regional train, which meant no seat booking, and kept the whole plan loose, with no fixed time to return other than making sure we caught the last train back. It was a cold and rainy day, though that did not put us off, since we planned to spend most of our time inside once we arrived. We boarded the train quite happily, but when we reached the border between Italy and Austria, the train stopped and simply did not move again, after a few minutes we were told that a rockslide further along the tracks had blocked the line and disrupted every train passing through that morning. Buses were promised to carry passengers across to the other side, but after one and a half hours standing in the rain there was still no sign of a single bus.
By this stage two more trains had arrived, and the little border station was filling with stranded passengers. We decided there was really no point standing about any longer, so we found a nearby restaurant and had a proper lunch before the rest of the crowd had the same idea, and using the Eurail app we noticed a train heading back in the right direction just after lunch, so we made our way back to the station to wait for it. By then more than two hundred people were looking for a way back, and there was no ticket office open at all, but thanks to our Eurail pass we were able to simply walk on board without any trouble.
One thing we do all the time is check for alternatives whenever the main suggestion offered by Trenitalia or another booking site does not quite fit our plans. Italy has certain cities that act as major nodes, where trains heading in very different directions all pass through, and Bologna is a perfect example. Quite often, when we search for a particular trip, the result we are given assumes the journey will be done as one single train, or with only the barest minimum of changes, but if the timing or the day does not suit us, we have learned to look instead at breaking the journey ourselves, stopping somewhere like Bologna and picking up a different train onward to where we actually want to go, a combination that rarely shows up in the original search. More than once we have arrived at a station like this with plenty of time to spare, enough to sit down for a proper lunch or dinner, before continuing on our way refreshed rather than rushed.
If there is one thing I would encourage every visitor to do before a trip to Italy, it is to learn at least a little of the language. You do not need to be fluent to notice the difference it makes, being able to read a departure board with confidence, understand an announcement about a platform change, or simply ask a fellow passenger which stop is yours, all of this becomes so much easier and so much less stressful with even a modest grasp of Italian, and it tends to open doors in a very human sense too, because Italians warm instantly to a visitor who has made the effort, however imperfect the accent.
This is actually one of the reasons I created Italiano Passo per Passo, my own step-by-step online Italian course, because I wanted to give people exactly the kind of practical, everyday Italian that makes travelling here feel less like navigating a foreign system and more like moving through a place that already feels a little familiar.
Discover Italiano Passo per PassoBook your fast trains early for the big distances, keep your regional trains flexible, always check the platform board again just before you board, travel a little lighter than you think you need to, and remember that even when things go wrong, as they sometimes will, there is usually a way through if you stay calm and keep an eye on your options. Do this and you will find, as I have found again and again, that the train is not just a way of getting around Italy, it is one of the very best ways of experiencing it.