Drive from FCO to Tuscany /Orvieto stop?

If you are coming from North America to FCO, you will be dog tired, and should head straight to your Tuscany lodging.

I would not advise stopping with luggage in the van. And you will certainly need a full size van, not a minivan.

Google Orvieto Train Station for location of the secure baggage drop. Buy funicular/bus tickets in the station, but do not take the nearby funicular. Instead take Bus 1 to the Piazza Della Repubblica, end your visit at the Duomo and walk down to the funicular to return to the station.

Free parking at the train station lot - Orvieto Scalo/Piazza della Pace. Easy to get to if you remember to put the train station as your destination. Large open air and as secure as any parking, paid or free, that we have used in Europe. Trouble more likely to occur during the night or at an isolated parking spot.

Month of year? (Heat, crowding, auto trans availability, issues) I agree that you have a conflict between passenger space and luggage space. I might warn you that the car rental company might offer you a car called in the US maybe, a "Transit van", which is commercial size, and both the height and box dimensions will be a desperate problem for you every single time you drive it. You also need to read volumes here about perennial Italy issues of insurance, ZTL, and IDP. You are not going to Chicago for a convention!

If you care to roll the dice, I find the (pay) municipal multi-tier parking garage at Orvieto (escalators and etc. to town center) to be similar to mall garages in the US. You might even try to find a space where the doors and rear of the van are blocked by walls or other large vehicles. Of course, that does NOT prevent glass-smash entry to the vehicle. I just wanted to offer you the option. The reason Orvieto built the garage is its massive tourism load, which of course also attracts thieves. (Not bad mouthing Orvieto, we loved our 5 hours there.)

While driving in Tuscany is not "hard", many of the roads are curvy, and sometimes only 1 1/2 lanes. You don't say if you have been to Europe before and know how you will feel after a night of miserably poor sleep. (We drove from a cruise return at Civitavecchia, so sleep deprivation was not an issue.

Make sure you all pack light, or you’ll need an extra car.

Also if you family consists of several adults it may be cheaper to rent multiple vehicles, since renting a large van costs on average 3 times as renting a compact car.

If any of your family members are under the age of 12 or under 150cm in height (4ft 11”), they must have child seats or boosters (requirements vary depending on size and age of child).

Leaving luggage unattended in a car is always a risk, although less so in a smaller town like Orvieto. Do a Google search for guarded parking or for a luggage depot service, like radical storage, bouncebag etc. they utilize local hotels or stores to leave luggage for a daily fee per bag. In any case all expensive effects (like electronic devices) should not be left unattended and should be taken with you.

The drive from FCO to Orvieto is about 1,5 hours. Then you need a similar amount of time or more to get to Tuscany, depending on where exactly you are headed since it’s a region larger than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined. Whether you can sustain that amount of travel while jet lagged or not depends on individuals. I can’t sleep on planes, so I get sleepy at the wheel after a long night flight, so I prefer not to venture into long drives upon arrival. But if the Athens you are from is the one in Greece, then jet lag is not an issue.

I would guess that with 7 people you’ll have more than one licensed driver. You could rent two smaller vehicles. Probably even cheaper than a 7 person van. The other advantage of such an arrangement would be that you wouldn’t all have to agree on daily itineraries.

Thanks for the helpful comments. I should have mentioned after a late afternoon May 23 arrival in Rome, we are staying that night near airport, renting vehicle at FCO the next morning. hopefully rested! Yes 9 passenger automatic vans are costly. Still debating pros and cons. Gas, tolls, etc. as we will be 10 days rental.and traveling Tuscany, and southMaremma coast back to Rome…

You can compare prices between a 9 pax van and smaller vehicles on www.AutoEurope.com. In my experience the rental cost is 3 times or more.
I just tested for a random week in May 2024 and the cost for a week rental at FCO is approximately $1000 for a compact and over $4000 for a van that large. A minivan would be under $1800 but that is not enough for 7 plus luggage. If you have multiple licensed adults you should rent multiple cars.
The cost of fuel and tolls is insignificant. Even assuming traveling only on toll freeways to get to Tuscany tolls will not amount to much at all. For example even if you drive from Rome all the way to Florence on the A1, the toll is just over 19€. Gasoline is expensive at almost 2€ per liter (about $8 per gallon), but distances are very short, even though they seem long given the nature of the road (lots of slow curvy mountain roads in Tuscany). There is no way that you will drive over 1500km in 10 days, not even i you are constantly driving around. Even in that case you will not need more that 200€ of gas per vehicle for your entire trip, but I am willing to bet you won’t spend half of that in gasoline if you are going to just southern Tuscany and Maremma. And by the way the fastest way back to Rome FCO from Maremma is through the Via Aurelia along the coast, a toll free divided highway, which becomes a toll freeway only south of Civitavecchia (the toll from Civitavecchia to FCO is less than 5€)