Flights to Florence, April 2018

Yep, it's super easy to take a train from Rome to Florence. First, there is a train station in/adjacent to the Rome (FCO) airport. You just follow the signs, take some escalators and you're there. There's a dedicated train (the "Leonardo Express") that runs at least every 30 minutes from FCO to the downtown Rome train station (Termini) although some of us prefer taking another train just a bit farther to the Roma Tiburtina station. From either of those Rome stations, very fast trains run at least hourly from Rome to Florence, and the trip itself is about 90 minutes. Look on trenitalia.com, choose the little British flag up in the right corner of the home web page in order to see it in English, then enter "Roma" and "Firenze" for departure and arrival stations, to see the options. In all, from arrival at FCO to arrival at the Florence train station can easily clock in at under 5 hours - sometimes even 4. Many folks choose NOT to pre-book their Rome-Florence tickets ahead of time, in case of flight delays; I travel more dangerously and usually buy the tickets ahead of time in order to save some money. Tickets will come with seat assignments, so pay attention to which "coach" (train car) and seat is on your ticket. Total cost should be under 50 euros (or less, if purchased well ahead).

There are also two daily "fast" trains which depart from Fiumicino Aeroporto directly to Firenze S.M. Novella (Florence's main train station). They depart at 11:08 and 15:08, and take 2 hrs, 14 minutes or so. If timing works with your flights, these can be nice as your jet-lagged brain doesn't have to deal with a change in Rome, although that's not difficult either. As jmauldinuu recommended, I would just purchase tickets at the airport versus in advance in case your flight is delayed.

The Florence airport is really small and doesn't seem to have much traffic.
Despite being a major tourist location most take the train or similar from elsewhere rather than fly into Florence.

Pisa is bigger and very easy to reach Florence from.
Milan and Rome are much bigger though not as close as Pisa you can easily catch a train to Florence from either of these 2.

Choice 3 is by far the WORST option. You are open to missing a connection and buying tickets at 'walk up' rates, (if available)

As for 1 or 2, its a matter of adding up airfare to Rome and train fare to Florence, vs. airfare to Florence.

Personally, I would spend as much as $150 more to go directly to Florence to not deal with the bother of the transfer. More than that and the choice becomes harder.

Do not overlook flying into Rome and out of Florence, or the reverse, to see if that saves some $$ and minimizes train transfers.

what is a good price to you?

Flight costs - well I have seen the flight from Chicago to Florence from approximately $1,000.00 to $1,500.00.

I would like to spend about $800.00 or less for a flight to Florence. Is this realistic for a flight to Italy?

I wasn't aware that the Florence airport was small, so I will look into Pisa. Rome continues to be an option.

Thanks to everyone. The information you have shared is very helpful.

Do the Chicago to Rome and take the train. This would be less than $800. on Air Canada in April

When using Kayak, in the destination field (FLR in your case), also click on the NEARBY AIRPORTS box.
The Bologna (BLQ) and Pisa (PSA) airport will be automatically included in the Kayak search. Both BLQ and PSA are within just over one hour from Florence. You don't need to go to Rome or Milan if the price to FLR, PSA, or BLQ are not much more.
Since my destination is generally Florence, I'm willing to pay a little extra for the convenience of avoiding transfers by train, if the difference is not huge.
Just be aware that you will likely need to spend the last night in the city you depart from since flights to North America generally depart in the morning.

Cheaper flights back to the states seem to depart very early in the morning, pretty much requiring that you stay a night in the city where the airport is --- the one night stay can be expensive, inconvenient, not in a great neighborhood, and a waste of precious time. The airports in Rome and Milan are quite far from the cities --- we have always had to get up at 2:00am to make our flights. On our last trip from Minneapolis to Florence (roundtrip $1026) a few weeks ago, we flew back home out of Florence, and it was a vastly different experience and well worth a few extra bucks, even worth it to take a taxi for the short ride to the small, easy to navigate airport. Fly into Rome or Milan, if it saves money, but fly out of Florence so you can spend more time there and have less hassle. You will love Florence! Be sure to see the Benozzo Gozzoli chapel in the Medici Riccardi palazzo and visit the Bardini museum and eat pizza at Fermento 1889 and a sandwich at 'ino.

This past summer, we were traveling from Florence to Chicago, and found very good fares on Aer Lingus from Pisa to Chicago via Dublin. Pisa is a short and very easy train ride from Florence, lots of trains all day long.

We found good prices flying from San Francisco to Paris in June. We paid 1770 for two. Then we are flying to Venice on another airline. That was our cheapest European gateway.

Thanks for your suggestions. Choice number 3 is off the list. I did some additional research and as someone said this is the worst option.
As of now, choice number one is our preference. This was reinforced by the experiences of many. However, if the savings is substantial we may take a train from Rome.
Thanks again!

I had posted this same question to this forum in August for our Florence trip and followed Roberto’s excellent advice that if I wasn’t planning on visiting Milan or Rome that I should fly into Florence. (My main reason wasn’t price but time, we could fly direct to Milan or Rome). We did, flew out of Boston, about $800 r/t and it was stress free both ways, especially for our return. Did have to hustle for our connections but we are used to that. A 10am return flight, didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, easy 20-30 minute ride to the airport. Some people have noted that sometimes Florence is impacted by strong winds but thankfully we didn’t have an issue (a little early morning fog though).

I've done Option 3 when the flash sale deals pop up. It was too hard to pass up a $600 ticket into Milan when my trip started in Siena. Then train down from there. Cheaper then over a 1k into Florence. Also I've taken cheap round trip deals into Lisbon and didn't even stay in town. Booked separate flight over to Barcelona to save over $500 since it's cheap to fly within Europe. I pack light and don't care where i sit on plane. Also don't Frankfurt on a round trip deal for a trip to Switzerland. AS long as you're flexible book around the deals, especially with $500-$650 flights common now when airlines thru up sales. Heck Emirates the past 2 years had 2 people for NYC to Milan for 1k.

I'd say fly to Milan or Rome, and take a train to Florence. It's clear when you're in Florence that the vast majority of visitors to the city don't arrive at Florence's relatively small regional airport.

For one thing, there are nonstop flights from Chicago (and a bunch of other US gateways, although not Minneapolis) to both Milan and Rome. That saves time, and expense. Even a connection in a European city like Paris or Amsterdam will result in many more options (and lower prices) going to Milan or Rome. Go ahead and do the price comparison, but also consider the extra time... with fewer flights in and out of Florence directly, you may have much longer layovers in connection airports, and more risk of missing a connection with no later alternatives.

Florence sits right in between Milan and Rome on the main high speed rail line down the center of Italy, so there are dozens of trains a day, on both Trenitalia (the state run train company), and to a lesser extent Italo (a new, private competitor with similar pricing and arguably nicer trains).

We recently stopped in Milan for just a day, on our way to Florence (coming from France) and were pleasantly surprised - it's a beautiful, easy to get around city, with a more cosmopolitan, modern feel, and fewer mobs of tourists than Florence or Rome. Worth a day trip if you'd like to stop.

My suggestion is to look at the pricing to the various airports, then decide based on that.

If all you care to see is Florence, if the airfare price is similar, then flying to Florence is preferable, because you save time and the train fare.

The FLR airport is only 15 min from the city center (25€ by taxi). Rome Fiumicino and especially Milan Malpensa are rather far from the city centers (at least 35 min by train). In addition the train journey from Florence to either Milan or Rome (city center) is about 1h45min and costs about 50€ one way.

There is also the fact that if you don’t fly out of Florence, you need to deal with the hassle of a hotel change (the last night you must stay in the city you depart from). If you depart from Florence you need to check in and out (and unpack/repack) only once.

As someone above mentioned, if the airfare ticket to Florence is only $150 more, I would fly to Florence.