Rome to Cinque Terre

First question: are you wanting to go to Sestri Levante? That is north of the CT so you will have bypassed it and would have to head south again.

Many trains from Rome to the CT change in La Spezia - which is only a few minutes away from Riomaggiore (the southernmost of the CT towns) so I'd take a different train if you want to go directly to one of the CT towns.

What website are you using?

That is an odd routing, as Sestri Levante is north of Cinque Terre and you will be coming from the south.

From Roma Termini there are direct trains to La Spezia at the south end of Cinque Terre. You can catch a Regional train that stops in all five villages there.

I'd also like to know which website you're using to research rail solutions.

Which of the five Cinque Terre towns are you planning to stay in? The easiest way to get from Rome to the Cinque Terre is to use one of the direct (no changes) trains which runs from Roma Termini to La Spezia Centrale. There are several of those each day, and others that take longer with multiple changes. The travel time is about 3H:45M. From La Spezia Centrale to the five towns takes between about 8 minutes to 15 minutes. It's a very simple route to travel.

When you buy your ticket, be sure to specify your end destination as whichever town you're going to. You'll be provided with two tickets, one for the direct train and one for the Regionale from La Spezia. BE SURE to validate your Regionale ticket or you'll risk hefty fines which will be collected on the spot!

Check the official Italian Railways website for best results:http://www.trenitalia.com

Click on the British flag icon to change to English(top right).

You will need to start typing the train stations in Italian:

1. Rome = Roma Termini
2. Monterosso is the same

Ken & the others have given you sound advice.

You can purchase your train tickets in advance if you want to save $, but your dates must be firm because discounted tickets come with restrictions.

I did this exact same trip in the fall of 2014. We had two general options for getting from Rome to Cinque Terre; intercity trains (with many stops) or high speed train. But still, all the trains will change to a local train in La Spezia. Once you've change to the local train, that train will allow you to access all five towns no problem.

When using the trenetalia website be sure to put Zeros in the time slot so you can see all the solutions available. We purchased our tickets from Roma Termini to Monterosso, on the fast train, which made us stop in La Spezia and switch to a regional train onto Monterosso. Super easy!! On the way from Monterosso to Florence we purchased out tickets the day before travel at a Kiosk. It is really important to play around with the Trenetalia website to get a feel on how it works, also the kiosks display look exactly the same as the website so no problem to navigate once in Italy.