Train Reservations Italy

Maia, to get the great fares on the high-speeds, you must accept a ticket that is non-refundable for the economy ticket and also non-exchangable for the Super Economy. Plus, you are locked into a specific train departing at a specific time. If you make this reservation too close to your arriving plane flight and your plane is late, your ticket could be toast. Since you want the discounted tickets, I would suggest booking about 3.5 hours after your arrival time. It should take you about and hour to de-plane, retrieve your luggage and clear immigration. Then, it will take you another hour to 90 minutes to get to Leonardo Express at Terminal 3, buy your ticket and take the LE to Rome-Termini. Then, you need another 15 minutes to go from the LE train into the main terminal, scan the monitor board for your train and finally board your train. The remaining hour or so is spare in case your plane happens to be late. Should things go really well on de-planning, immigration and the LE express, you would have a bit more time to wait for your train. I would suggest that that's the price of remaining safe with your discounted ticket.

As always, the answer is "how lucky do you feel?" and "how risk averse are you?" You don't know if your flight will be delayed or how long it will take you to get through the airport If you feel lucky and don't mind some risk, you can buy an advance ticket. if you can get the €9 fare, you may choose to buy a few at different times, as you can afford to throw away the ones you don't need. But if you don't want risk, you can just wait until you arrive. Since there are something like 50 trains per day between Rome and Florence, you don't have to worry that you won't get on one, but you will pay last minute fares (look at prices for tomorrow to see what these will be).

I checked several days in mid-May and there are no 9 euro fares from Rome to Firenze. There are lots of 19 euro and 20 euro fares. Base fare (what you will pay at the station) is 43 euros, so you would save a bit, particularly with the 19 euro fare. But you would have to build in a bit of extra time, just in case, as Larry suggests. If I were coming off an overseas flight from Seattle, I think I would rather pay the 43 euros than stress over missing the train I booked, or wait around an extra hour or so because I booked a late one to be safe.

Adding to Lola's comments, I recently scanned every run of the day from Rome to Florence and from Venice to Florence. No 9Euro fares on any run. The Super Economy fare was 19Euro which was available.

Thank you Larry, Harold and Lola. That was helpful! And I read on another website that the 9 euro fare was discontinued sometime in 2012; that's why you didn't see any. Just one more technical clarification: I know reservations are required for high-speed trains; can one make a reservation when buying a ticket at the train station shortly before the train is scheduled to depart? Rick Steve's says in his book that there's no deadline to buy tickets. It wasn't clear to me if this statement applies to buying a reserved seat also.

The reservation comes with the ticket and is included in the fare. So long as seats are available, you can buy a ticket at the last minute at the station.

Thank you, everyone, for the train ticket/reservation info!

And except on big holidays, few Italian trains are ever "sold out."
You've got plenty of time to get to Florence, check into your room and put on your walking shoes.

Maia, definitely book your ticket before you arrive into Rome. A few years ago we were at the Termini and naively tried to use our Eurail pass to get seats on the Florence high speed train. All the seats were sold out for the next handful of trains, so we had to take the slower Regionale train and lost a few hours. It was very scenic though!