Fly into Rome out of Venice or vice versa

maybe venice? then take a train to Rome (3 hours?) and a plane to Paris.

best,
Stefany

You'll deal with each airport once, and Venice's smaller airport is a lot more low-key place to start. Venice airport buses takes you to Piazzale Roma, where you can connect to a vaporetto down the Grand Canal. There's probably also a little more competition offering cheap flights from Rome to Paris. Do book into Paris Orly or Charles de Gaulle, in preference to Beauvais airport, which is far from Paris.

Personally, I'd fly Detroit to Rome. Train to Venice. Fly Venice to Paris and fly home to Detroit from Paris. Or if you can find great airfare, fly Detroit to Paris. Fly Paris to Venice. Train to Rome. Fly home from Rome.

I would fly into Venice and out of Rome. I've found better flights times departing Rome to return home like 10 am and 11 am vs times of 7am and 8am to depart out of Venice. Plus Venice is nice to wander around, get lost and see the back lanes. You can relax in venice upon arrival. Rome has more tourist sights I'd rather do at the end or middle of my trip, not the first couple of day.

Either airport is ok, we've done it both ways. Regarding Venice as not as easy to get to, the main issue is that most flights to the US leave very early in the morning and those of us using public transportation have to deal with the vaporetto and bus or other more expensive water taxis to get to the airport on time. Check the departure times from Venice and I'd just choose the path with the best departure/arrival times and lowest cost.

Really two different types of airports and situations. The Rome airport has many direct flights to and from the US. Nearly all if not all flights from Venice will need to connect somewhere else in Europe for the direct flight back to the US. Personally I would opt for Rome, Venice, Paris.

I would fly into Venice rather than Rome, mainly because Venice is a more pleasant place to recover from jet lag. What time of year will you be going?

Delta has non stop flights from DTW to both CDG and FCO. There are no direct non stop flights from DTW to VCE.
I would do:
DTW-FCO
then travel via ground from Rome to Venice
VCE-CDG (with AirFrance/Delta codeshare). Stop a few days in Paris.
Proceed with Delta/Airfrance
CDG-DTW.

You could also do the opposite, if you want to visit Paris first.
DTW-CDG visit Paris
CDG-VCE
Venice to Rome via ground
FCO-DTW

Doing Venice first increases the time spent on planes because you have an extra layover.. Because you would need to do the following:
DTW-CDG-VCE
Venice to Rome via Ground.
FCO-CDG. visit Paris
CDG-DTW

I always prefer to fly out of one of the big gateway European airports coming home. And I will never take a flight before 9:00 a.m.

It's bad enough that you have to fly 10 hours to the U.S. and then have to transfer to another flight home.

But it's virtually impossible to get a decent night's sleep when you've got to get up at 4:00 a.m. or earlier to make a 6:00 a.m. flight. And then you're going to just sit around another European airport 4-5 hours until you catch the big plane home.

Thank you everyone for the responses. I'm thinking we will do Rome, Venice then Paris. Sounds like the easiest & least expensive option. Looking forward to seeing Italy for the first time & Paris for the third time. Paris has a direct flight to DTW that departs at 1:30pm which works really well for us.