Booking train tickets

Buy from Trenitalia.com, Italitreno.it, or Captaintrain.com. These sites will give you the best fares. You do not have to buy in advance, but if you do not buy in advance you will not get the non-ref lowest fares. CaptainTrain.com seems to be the easiest site to understand and will give you choices on both Trenitalia and Italo.

You can buy regionale (not high speed) train tickets day-of-travel at the station.

On some routes you may be able to purchase tickets at a much lower price than usual if you book far in advance (cheaper tickets go on sale 4 months prior to your departure date on this website: www.trenitalia.com Compare with the other website you are using.

Price ranges on both web sites will be similar. The larger difference is in booking far enough ahead to get the deepest discounts (Super Economy vs. Economy vs. Base/full fare). Trains are not likely to sell out, although the cheapest class of service might sell out on a particular departure.

I just booked 4 separate trips for October through the Trenitalia website and found it very user friendly. I also checked italiarail. I found that prices on Trenitalia were slightly less expensive and it offered a greater selection of trips than Italiarail. If the site is in Italian, just go to the flag in the upper right corner and change it to English. The only things to remember are that the city names are the Italian version, not the English version (eg Padova, not Padua) and once you have chosen a ticket, there's a count down clock showing how much time you have left to complete your transaction.

Thank you all so much. Yeah, I noticed that in the Trenitalia website the fares are cheaper. But am I going to get charged an international transaction fee by my bank because it charges in euros? I'm from the United States.

I buy tickets from Trenitalia fairly often, I use a card with no foreign transaction fee.

Remember to let your card issuer know that you will use it for international purchases so it doesn't get blocked.

You can also book tickets for trains in France, Italy or Germany (among others) using www.captaintrain.com (they sell at the same price as the rail networks). The website is very user friendly.

I would recommend buying your train tickets in advance from trenitalia.com. It's easy because you can choose the English option, but you do have to type in the Italian names of the train stations. You will be emailed a paper ticket for the fast trains and there is no service charge, even for seat reservations.