Cinque Terre from Florence by Train and back to Florence?

Use La Spezia Centrale station and then the name of whichever particular town within the Cinque Terre where you wish to alight or depart: Monterosso (al Mare), Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, or Riomaggiore.

For a day trip to Cinque Terre, many people recommend taking the 7:28am Freccia train from the Campo di Marte station to La Spezia Centrale. It's much faster than other trains, and the Campo di Marte station is easy and fairly inexpensive to reach by taxi from anywhere in Florence. You must pre-purchase those tickets to obtain the lowest fare.

Once at La Spezia Centrale, you can either purchase an all-day train pass to travel within the Cinque Terre or buy individual tickets. There's no discount or advantage to pre-purchasing these tickets.

Most of the trains returning to Florence in the afternoon or early evening will be regional trains requiring a change at Pisa Centrale. There are no discounts and the regional trains can't sell out, so you can buy those tickets when you're ready to depart for Florence. There are a few Intercity and Freccia trains that run during these times. They would offer a discount for pre-purchase, but doing so locks you into a departure time.

There have been many prior posts with questions about Cinque Terre day trips from Florence. To garner the knowledge from all those posts, use the Search box at the top of the page.

“There's no discount or advantage to pre-purchasing these tickets.”

I disagree. The advantage is not wasting time in La Spezia with an aditional ticket purchase. The CT card can also be purchased on line:

https://card.parconazionale5terre.it/

Be sure to check the cruise ship schedule. The problem with a day trip is spending around seven hours on trains and going to and from stations.

Thank you for the tip on checking the cruise ship schedule. The week we are in Florence in September, there is NO ship arriving into port on Sunday Sept 15. Is Sunday a good day to travel to Cinque Terre?
Aloha

The official site of Trenitalia is www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en That .us site is a fake one set up by a spanish company based in Barcelona! I would not trust such a company, the only US based authorized reseller is ItaliaRail.

On the official site, If you want to go from A to B, you put A in the From field and B as arrival station. You are not supposed to know if, where and when you'll have to change.

In your case A is "Firenze Tutte le stazioni" (meaning Florence Any station). B is the Cinque Terre village of your choice. Pick an early hour of departure from the drop down menu. I'd go by train to Monterosso Al Mare, the biggest and the most distant village from La Spezia, then I'd go back to La Spezia visiting some villages by ferry and others on foot.

Regionale and Cinque Terre Express trains can't sell out.

“There's no discount or advantage to pre-purchasing these tickets.”

I disagree. The advantage is not wasting time in La Spezia with an aditional ticket purchase.

And the disadvantage is you just turned a ticket if purchased at the station that is good anytime that day into a ticket that has a narrower time span when it can be used.

Do you need to buy in advance?
Regional trains, no. For example, Pisa to Florence, Florence to Siena, Milan to Como or Milan to Tirano. There's absolutely no need to buy in advance and no advantage in doing so other than saving time at the ticket office. The price is fixed so there's no cost advantage in pre-booking, no reservation is necessary or even possible so the train can never 'sell out'. In fact, buying in advance is a disadvantage as regional tickets bought online are non-refundable and non-changeable, limited to a 4-hour window from the time of train you book.

https://www.seat61.com/Italy-trains.htm#How%20to%20buy%20train%20tickets%20for%20Italy

In France I know the rules are even tighter; you have to take the exact train you purchased online

Thank you for all the Advice. Aloha, kathy