Will be in Venice for 3 days, Florence for 5 and Rome for 6.
Looking for best options to purchase multiple days in each city.
Would love to have just one pass in each city at the beginning of the trip.
Also should I buy online or deal with when we get there?
A public transit pass in Venice is useful since the single ride tickets are around $7.50 each. And the water buses are great for getting around in Venice. After that it is questionable. Florence and Rome are both very walkable and the need for a bus pass is very low -- I think single ride are $1.50 or so. Over the years we have spent about a month in Rome and we have ridden the metro twice and maybe three or four times for a bus. We never took a bus in Florence.
The exception might be if you were staying in the suburbs and needed to take public transit into the city each day.
Don't know about Florence and Rome, but Venice is 72 hours from first use costing 40 EUR. If you are arriving at Venice airport, you can add the airport bus for an additional 6 EUR.
Even if you buy in advance, you will still need to pick it up from a vending machine with your confirmation code, and there is no discount for advance purchase. So it is just as easy to buy it when you arrive. It has an RF chip in it and you must scan at every use, the bus and each vaporetto on the boarding dock.
For Rome, you want the weekly CIS ticket. You validate it once, then just keep it with you, in case it is checked. https://www.rometoolkit.com/transport/rome_travel_pass.htm
For Florence, unless you are staying outside the center, a local bus pass will not get much use. There are only a few routes that go through the center, and most of the tourist area is walkable. The only local bus you will probably take will be to Fiesole (highly recommended). The rest of the time, you'll walk; if for some reason you don't want to or can't walk, you'll take a taxi.
We always buy the Rome multi day transit passes either at a train station or from a tobacco shop. It’s true that Rome is very walkable, but we love being able to jump on a tram, bus or local train as desired. We have gone to many out of the way neighborhoods this way. You may only need a 2-3 day pass.
To echo Harold, Florence is so compact and the bus runs since limited routes that a pass really wouldn't be much use. We didn't need or use public transit once over a 5-day stay (but didn't get up to Fiesole, which is on the next trip's agenda.)
I'll say nearly the same for Rome. While larger, it's much more interesting to explore on foot, and you can get from some points to others even faster that way than by transit. We just buy some single-ride €1.50 BIT tickets and tuck them away for when we might want to cover a substantial area of ground without expending shoe leather. Do note that passes and BIT tickets do not cover transport to/from the airports. Just buy your tickets or passes when you get to Rome.
https://www.rometoolkit.com/transport/rome_travel_pass.htm
(Editing to add: apologies, Harold, for duplicating the toolkit weblink you'd already provided. Hard to remember what had already been posted when one does a reply!)
Unless you're staying outside of central Florence, you probably won't use the buses and trams a lot. If you think you might use them a lot, your best bet is to stop at an ATAF office and ask about options. The best location for that is located outside the SMN train station, on the left side as you face the tracks - walk past the Sapori & Dintori and past the flower shop. I'm not sure whether 1-day and 1-week tourist passes are still offered under the new ticket pricing that went into effect on July 1.
I use public transit a lot in Rome and almost always buy a pass. Not all locations sell the 1-week pass, but I believe you can buy it at the ticket window near the metro entrance under Termini train station. The ticket kiosks there might also sell them, but I don't remember for sure.
I hope you have a fabulous trip. I agree with previous posts for Florence and Rome except I do NOT recommend the Venice transit pass. Venezia Unica. We bought the 3 day pass to use on our phone. One pass never worked - said it was "expired" each time we tried to use it our whole trip even though we downloaded it right upon arrival and attempted to activate immediately prior to first use. The company refused to help us saying it was an "app problem", then a "machine reader" problem, then suggested we crawl under the turnstile. Even though they sold us a defective product and could see all the troubles we were having they didn't really seem to care. We are still awaiting a reply to our report. In Venice each 90 min vaporetto ticket costs 7euro50. A 3 day transit pass costs 40 euro. You need to make more than 5 trips to break even. And most people in Venice do walk around the islands.
As in other cities, there are recommended passes and less-than-optimal passes. For Venice, the transit-only pass for 24- 36- or 72-hours may be a good purchase if you will be taking multiple vaporetto trips; the more expensive Venezia Unica pass, with museums and churches included, requires further analysis to determine its relative value. As always, it's a case of "crunch the numbers" for your own situation.
Used a Roma Pass for our first trip to Rome, individual tickets on later trips. Bought a Firenze Pass for 72 hours of museums once (no transit used, just walked)
