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Rome to Sienna/Tuscany

Staying in Rome end of Oct to early Nov. How do we take a bus to Sienna center or other towns in Tuscany? I saw buses that drop you off at the train station. Must we take a taxi?

Posted by
1647 posts

The walk from the train station in Sienna to the Piazza del Campo isn't very far (25 minutes). You can take a bus ($2-3) or a taxi ($15) if you prefer. Not sure how close the taxi and bus comes to the Piazza. The train station is below the city center and you take about 9 escalators through a mall to get to the top. It is a nice walk through the small streets of Sienna. Some of the trains stations in Tuscany are either in the city center or a 10-15 minute walk away (depends on the city). Some smaller towns can only be accessed by buses. I can only speak about trains, I rarely ride buses from city to city. You have to be more specific in which towns you are planning on seeing.

Posted by
3 posts

I would like to visit San Gimignano, Assisi, Montepulciano and maybe Pienza.

Posted by
58 posts

steiger:

In 2013 I took a bus from Rome to Siena and also took the bus from Siena back to Rome. I was advised on another travel forum (Fodor's) that the bus was preferable to the train. The bus was comfortable and the ride direct.

I'm looking at my 2013 travel journal, which contains, among other ephemera, my bus ticket for the trip to Siena. The agency involved was called Baltour-Eurolines-Sena, and my ticket indicates various websites, including:
www.baltour.it
www.eurolines.it
www.sena.it

The bus dropped me off at the bus station in the heart of Siena, where I stayed for a week. From that station, I was also conveniently took day trips to Arezzo and San Gimignano.

I hope this is helpful.

Posted by
3551 posts

From Siena it is an easy bus ride to Pienza, Montepulciano and San Gimi.
As I drove to Assisi I am uncertain about buses there.

Posted by
11294 posts

"I would like to visit San Gimignano, Assisi, Montepulciano and maybe Pienza."

Do you want to visit these towns from Siena or from Rome, or from somewhere else? Be prepared to have to make changes (take several buses), and to have limited options. For instance, you'll read that there are "five buses per day" on a route, but it may turn out that the times are 6 AM, 7 AM, 8 AM, 4 PM, and 5 PM.

A great trick which I learned from acraven on this forum: to find buses, start with Rome2Rio https://www.rome2rio.com/. From it, see who operates the bus on the route you want. Then, go directly to the bus company's website to get correct, up to date information on schedules, prices, etc (never trust Rome2Rio for this). If the website is only in Italian, use Google Translate, which is built into the Chrome browser, or can be accessed here: https://translate.google.com/

Posted by
4105 posts

How many days will you have to see these towns? This may make a huge difference as to where you base yourself and how much your travel time between locations take.

Posted by
3 posts

I'm staying in Rome. Would it be better to take a day trip with a tour company to see 1 or 2 towns only?

Posted by
26840 posts

It's usually a real slog to get from a large town in one region (Rome, in Lazio) to a small town in a different region (San Gimignano, Tuscany). There are usually fast trains between the large cities (Rome-Florence), but even getting from Rome to Siena (a good-sized place) will take 3 hr. 18 min. by train. The small towns are likely to take longer than that.

I don't know whether there are bus tours from Rome going to the small Tuscan towns. Most people without rental cars visit them from Florence, which is much closer.

You might consider going to Orvieto instead. It is a beautiful town, easily accessible from Rome by train in about 1-1/4 hours.