Will be driving from Siena to Rome on a Sunday. Will get early start 7:30 am. Would like to arrive Rome hotel by 6:00 pm. Can i make stops in Pienza, Montepulciano and Civita di Bagnoregio and make this time frame work.
Open to other suggestions for stops that can make this an enjoyable day.
Orvieto is near the highway and an interesting stop.
Pop your route into Google Maps and you should get a good idea of driving time, but time to seeeach of those three places will be limited. Civita takes some time because you have to park in Bagnoregio and walk across the bridge to the town.
Just know where the ZTL’s are in Rome - and the other towns you wish to visit. If you drive to your hotel to drop your bags, it could be a very expensive excursion. Last time I drove to Rome I dropped the car at the rental office at Termini and hopped a cab to my hotel. The time before that, on Christmas Eve, I drove through the same ZTL point twice. Could have paid for another 5 days in Italy.
The drive time for your route is about 4.5 hours. Because of the time involved in visiting Civita, I would not stop there but would stop in Orvieto. Try to determine why you want to visit Pienza and Montepulciano; determine what’s important. Then out of the three potential stops, I’d eliminate one. By the time you reach the town center and find a parking spot, add another half hour to your travel time. By visiting only two, you should not feel rushed or stressed out and you could really savor your visits.
When driving into Rome, it's critical to know the ZTL active times. For the city center they're M-F 6:30 AM to 6:30 PM, and Saturday 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM (the ZTL is NOT active in Rome's center on Sunday's or holidays). On Friday and Saturday evenings, some ZTL areas (including the center) have an 11:00 PM to 3:00 AM restriction, so get yourself a good map to know where those active ZTL areas are.
You may want to adjust your arrival time by an hour if you'll travel through a ZTL restricted area so you don't run afoul of the open time driving a car is allowed, targeting an arrival time of 7:00 PM so you don't enter the ZTL before 6:30 PM.
Regarding your proposed route - the drive time itself is 4-hours 45-minutes, if you switch Montepulciano as first stop, then Pienza, you're still driving 4-hours 39-minutes, so no real time savings, but your route (IMO) is a nicer drive. I'm not sure I'd try to make three stops to explore in one day with that many hours of driving along the way (and we road-trip a lot) - is there a reason for the towns you've chosen? Are there things you specifically want to see, or just poking around? If you opt to do just one, like Civita di Bagnoregio, your total drive time is then 3-hours 40-minutes, which would give you one more hour off the road to explore.
Thanks for the replies. Helpful. Our thoughts/plans are two fold. 1. we just want a scenic drive to make our way to Rome. We enjoy driving, taking a day to just make our way from point A to B 2. We plan to come back next year and spend a week in Tuscany and thought this drive would give us a glimpse of areas we want to spend time in on our next trip. A teaser if you will.
Civita di Bagnoregio appears to be more time than we need for this type drive. So if we drop this other thoguhts are appreciated.
These link to ZTL maps might help travelers https://www.autoeurope.com/italy-ztl-zones/. Knowing the actual times that they are in effect is even more helpful. I was going to rent a car from a Hertz dealer in the city center of Roma, picking it up on the way out, and dropping it off after 7 weeks, but after looking at this map decided I had better not.
