Nice to Florence. Is there an overnight train?

rice,

I'd suggest travelling during the day on that route. I wouldn't make a stop anywhere, unless there's a particular location you want to see.

For example, there's a departure from Nice Ville at 07:54, arriving Firenze SMN at 14:55 (time 7H:01M, 2 changes). The layover at Milano Centrale is only about 25 minutes, which is quite reasonable. There are numerous trains on that route, with varying travel times. You can view all the solutions on the bahn.de website.

If you're buying P-P tickets in Nice, the agents there may only be able to sell tickets as far as Ventimiglia (first stop in Italy). You can either buy tickets for the trip from there to Florence at the station in Ventimiglia or online.

Thank you for the link and schedule.

7 hours of day travel seems so wasteful, hence why I why looking for a night train. Is there one available or a different path?

There is another route, shorter in distance but longer in time. But at least you go through some nice stretches of coastline. Basically you take the train all along tho coast to Pisa (look at a map to have a visual). That stretch alone requires various changes (Ventimiglia, Genoa, possibly La Spezia). Once in Pisa you take one of the many trains traveling to Florence (1 hour between Florence and Pisa).

If you can handle leaving very early in the AM, there is a train which departs Nice Ville at 5:25am. That will put you in Ventimiglia on time for the Intercity no. 505 dep. Ventimiglia at 06:33 and arriving in Pisa at 10:56 with no changes in between. It will be 4h 23min of outstanding views along the riviera. Once in Pisa, you might want to stop an hour or so to visit the leaning tower (drop your luggage at the luggage storage, or deposito bagagli). Then when you are done go back to the Pisa Centrale station, retrieve your luggage and take the first available train to Florence. There are at least two every hour. If you don't want to see the tower of Pisa there is a train to Florence at 11:12 which will get you to Florence at noon exactly.

If you can't handle early departures there are later options, but they all require 2 or more changes (Genoa, in addition to Ventimiglia) and therefore more time.

There are no faster options. The rail line between Nice and Genoa is in part single track and trains travel as slow as American Amtrak trains in that section. Also all require a change in Ventimiglia because of some train equipment incompatibility between the French line and that section of the Italian railway (I think it has to do with the electric power requirements).

Check www.bahn.com for schedules. Try Nice Ville to Pisa Centrale.

Night trains on routes that require several short legs don't exist. Since you have to change trains every few hours, night trains aren't practical for the rail system or the traveler. There is no direct train that goes from Nice to Florence.

Thank you everyone. It seems that I can only find fares on raileurope. Is this the only option to book tickets? I searched on DB Bahn but it would not allow me to see fares.

Thank you

rice,

I'd suggest not using Rail Europe to buy tickets as they're often a more expensive option and they may not show all available routes.

It's not necessary to pre-purchase tickets, as it's very easy to buy them at local rail stations. However, if you wish to pre-purchase the segment from Nice to Ventimiglia, you might try Capitaine Train. For the segment from Ventimiglia to Florence, you might try Italia Rail. You can also use the Trenitalia website but note you'll be using Regionale trains for part of that route, and they typically don't sell tickets for those until seven days prior to departure.

Note that Regionale tickets MUST be validated prior to boarding the train on the day of travel, or you're risk hefty fines which will be collected on the spot! If you buy from the ItaliaRail website, you may be able to purchase Regionale tickets more than seven days in advance, however the tickets may be pre-validated for a specific train, and may have to be picked up from a Kiosk in Italy. Finally, as you'll also be using Freccia / InterCity trains on that route, tickets for those are specific to a particular train, date and departure time, so you can only use the ONE train specified on the tickets. If you board any other train (even by mistake), again hefty fines.

You can see the composition of the trains (ie: what type of trains you'll be using) and departure / arrival times using the bahn.de website.

The reason you can't get prices from the DB even though they are the best for showing the train choices is that they are the German national railway and only actually sell tickets (with a couple of exceptions) on trains which start, finish, or make the journey in Germany.

Rail Europe will not show the cheapest tickets. Use the SNCF and Trenitalia sites for those, or the Capitaine Train.

There has not been an overnight train departing from Nice to Italy for several years.