Arriving FCO Rome - How long to get through customs

This topic comes up often
There is no way to predict if your flight will actually arrive on time or how long passport control will take
Smart thing to do is to wait til you arrive and buy your train ticket then
There are multiple fast trains every hour from Termini to Florence

There is also one direct from FCO to Firenze SM Novella a day at 1:53 pm

Our last time, we arrived in the morning, and it was maybe 12 minutes in the roped-off maze to get to the passport check window. I don’t know if a 1:00 P.M. arrival would be busier and longer, with more other flights also arriving or not. From there, it was less than 10 minutes for a bathroom break and rolling our carry-on suitcases to the red machines for the Leonardo Express tickets. Uniformed attendants were at the machines to help us easily and quickly purchase tickets for the next train.

We were also going directly to Florence, but we didn’t get train tickets ahead of time. We checked and an Italo train was the next one leaving, so got tickets and were departing not long thereafter. If a TrenItalia train had been next, we’d have gotten tickets for it. This let us not be committed to a particular train, and we didn’t have to determine a reasonable time ahead of time.

Last September it took over an hour and was decidedly chaotic but we may have just been unlucky. Friends we were meeting with had a much better experience arriving a couple days earlier.

Happy travels.

We arrived around 9 am. I have EU passport and it was a minute, my niece took about 40 minutes. It depends how many planes land at the same time. I'll be meeting a friend in May and was wondering how long I will have to wait when she arrives.