Renting a car for trip in Italy

Many places within Rome to rent. The simplest place might be at Termini, the main rail depot. There are a number of rental agencies there. Read posts about ZTL - restricted travel zones in Rome and other cities - and speed cameras on the Autostrada so you don't get any nasty surprises in the mail. A GPS is a must have.

I wouldn't mind being a little out of the middle of the city. I don't mind paying a little extra to let a taxi driver handle the difficult traffic. I agree about the GPS and the speed limits. I know all about that nasty surprise after returning home. Bruges has those traffic cameras, too.

Since this was not mentioned in the above posts, it hopefully will help you to know that very few travelers, reporting on this forum, seem to rent a car in Rome. On your last day in Rome, as you're leaving, sure--but not while you're in Rome, that would not enhance your enjoyment of Rome.

Florence is in a similar, but slightly different, category from Rome, car-wise. Of course, many travelers who have been to Italy before, decide to travel between the 4 destinations you mentioned by high speed train. But some travelers decide to rent a car, and they are the ones that end up with a car in Florence.

Basically, it's difficult to do both of these: have a rental car in Florence and sleep in the central historic area of Florence. Many experienced travelers to Italy do one or the other, but not both. On my first trip to Florence, I actually tried to do both--and it didn't enhance my enjoyment of either Florence or the car.

Having a car in Florence makes some travelers want to be careful to select a hotel that offers affordable, convenient and secure parking. Most if not all of the hotels that offer this are not in the historic center but farther out, where there is space for surface parking.

Also, in Florence, there are zones (called ZTL's) where, although you can easily drive into them, if you do you get a hefty fine in the mail a few months later.

Rick Steves has written about these various problems with rental cars in Rome and Florence, in his books on Italy. Or you can search this site for many posts on this subject.

Good luck on this, and happy travels!

Don't hesitate to let us know if you have more questions about rental cars in Rome and Florence.

Thank you, Kent. We're following the RS guidebook's advice and parking in a lot and then taking a taxi to the B&B con vista La Dimora deli Angeli, where we have our reservations. It's a little expensive, but we enjoy driving through the country.

It's the traffic in Rome I'm mostly concerned with.

Please explain to me why you need to rent a car to go to the locations you mentioned in you post.
None of them requires a car to visit. As a matter of fact a car would be a huge hassle to have, just like a car is a huge and expensive hassle to have in Manhattan. You can reach all the locations you mentioned by high speed train in half the time you would by car and you would save the rental car charges and parking fees. Cars aren't allowed in Venice anyway ( they can't float).
Take the train my friend and forget about renting a car. You don't need one at all.

Thomas: We always go open jaw when flying into and out of Europe. It avoids having to backtrack, and it's a big money saver.

For example, you could fly into Venice and out of FCO. To return to Rome will be very expensive with gasoline @ $9.25ish (equivalent) per U.S. gallon, You'll probably also hit a bunch of toll booths on the way back south. Back tracking is going to take time you could spend visiting other places and cities.

I would suggest you take a fast train to Venice from Rome. Then come back to Florence via fast train. (You won't miss much as much of the 149 mile trip is as flat as Arkansas.) The last hour north of Florence is a crooked, congested motorway for the most part.

Pick up the rental car as you leave Florence and save time to see cities like San Gimignano, Volterra and Siena. We also loved Orvieto where we turned in our rental car across the street from the train station @ Hertz.

It's a 70 minute train ride from Orvieto to Rome Termini and another half hour trip out to FCO.

Roberto, we've found that the countries we visit have interesting sites between the big cities. Driving a car gets us away from the typical tourist areas and into parts of the country we wouldn't see otherwise. For instance, last year we were driving through Suffolk in England and saw a sign for stock car racing. We took a few hours to check it out and found a typical North Carolina back-country stock car race except with smaller cars (in keeping with the English gas prices) and English logos on the baseball caps and t-shirts. There were seriously souped up cars, but also cars patched together with duct tape by the local garages. The last race took all of the remaining clunkers and hitched camping trailers (or at least the outer shells) for a fun-filled "caravan race."

We know this wouldn't be on most tourists "must see" list, but it was a chance to be one of the few tourists enjoying a quirky day with thousands of local race enthusiasts and their families.

I could give you many more examples from other trips to France, Belgium, England, and Wales.

High speed trains tend to miss these back door experiences. We know because we experienced the bullet trains this year on trips from Paris-Brussels, Brussels-Amsterdam, and Basel-Paris. For getting from point A to point B, trains are a great way to go. Likewise, for some people guided tours are a good choice. We like to do our own planning and find our own way with a little time for discovering things for ourselves.

David, thank you for the money-saving tips. Our flight reservations are already made so flying open jaw isn't an option this time. We thought about taking trains, but decided to drive.

But we would like to pick up our car outside of the center of Rome. Which is why we asked the original question.

You might want to check with Autoeurope.com. They're a consolidator and use various rental companies. Go to their website and call their toll free number. I'm sure one of their customer service reps would gladly help and give you various options.

We're renting a car next month for Tuscany and dropping it at Tiburtina. Andy from gamut.com recommended this as an alternative to FCO since we will be coming from the north. Supposedly it's fairly easy to get from the autostrada to Tiburtina. Since you're doing this in reverse, maybe this would work for you. (I also really can't imagine not having a car for the freedom of seeing the small towns in Tuscany and Umbria.)

If you want to visit more than just the cities you mentioned, then it might make sense to rent a car to see the small towns and the countryside of Tuscany and Umbria.
I presume you have several days at your disposal then.
Not necessarily sure you need a car between Florence and Venice. It's a boring drive north of Bologna.
You can rent at any city location and return at FCO at no extra charge. The city location easier to get out of Rome is from the Tiburtina station.

We'll take the advice not to drive from Rome to Venice. It appears to be a long drive without much time for side trips. Thanks for the advice. We may come back for thoughts about driving after we leave Venice.

Consider leaving Rome by train to Orvieto, staying the night, then picking up your rental car from a two minute walk (left) from the train station. This is what we did early in the week and couldn't have been easier. Getting used to driving in Italy was much easier starting in Orvieto and heading north than it would have been from Rome. We took the bus from the Campino airport into central Rome a few days earlier and that ride alone was enough to convince me not to even attempt driving anywhere in Rome! :)

Thank you, Shauna. I'm not a fan of driving in the middle of cities anywhere, but Rome seems to be more stressful than most so i've heard. We already have our flights and lodging all set (including a Rick Steves Rome tour). The RS Tour was added after the flights were set so we scheduled Venice, Florence and Orvieto around those dates. The trip from Rome to Venice seems to be too far to drive in one day unless that's all we do. And then the car would sit in a parking lot for three nights. So the advice I've seen here about taking the train for this leg of the trip convinced me.

After Venice, we have two nights in Florence, two in Orvieto, and then we go to FCO/Rome Airport to catch a flight to London. It seems that the drives between Venice-Florence, Florence-Orvieto, and Orvieto-FCO are manageable and leave enough time for side trips along the way. We're especially looking forward to the Scrvegni Chapel in Padua.

best day trip from Venice with car: Aquileia, amazing mosaics on the church floor and excavations are being done by teams of other historic ruins. there are a couple of coffee shops on the grounds, if you, like us, realize you are running out of time and better grab a slice of pizza and a soda and get back on the road. best tip for parking there, and perhaps other places, you need a handful of coins to feed a meter.

full disclosure....we did this between lake bled, Slovenia and Venice. 48 hours from Venice to Aquileia, did justice to lake bled, then back to Venice. I recommend it if you are looking for off the beaten path. Warning, signage in Slovenia is a tad confusing, and I swear none of it is lit after dark. see above warning about grabbing pizza and driving to bled before it is pitch dark.

Driving in Italy all drivers require an International Drivers Permit, available near Hermosa Beach at the SCAA.