Trains: Siena & Florence and Siena & Rome

Direct trains Rome to Florence are direct fast and frequent. Most people recommend taking a bus from Florence to Siena, as the bus station is up in the main city and the train station is down in the valley below the city proper. The bus is also faster as the train takes a somewhat round about way.

No direct trains to Rome. Again, bus may be faster as there are direct highways, but the train route is not. Often the fastest way is going back to Florence and taking a train from there.

Roma Termini station has a giant electronic train departure board and each platform will have electronic signs showing destination of the train at each track. Most train personnel on the fast Freccia trains to Florence will know some English.

Siena is reached only by regional train lines, and rather slow ones as trains have to crawl twisty routes at the bases of hills. While there are train services Florence to Siena and vv. and Siena to Chiusi with transfer to Rome, buses may be faster than trains, and backtracking to Florence may be the fastest way to reach Rome.

And we would like to go from Siena to Rome without transfer. We are wondering if that is possible?

Only by bus, you'll arrive 5 minutes away from Tiburtina metro & railway station in Rome.

You don't really need to speak italian to find your train: both trains and tracks are numbered.
Monitors and boards headed "Partenze/Departures" work like those inside airports: the train (flight) code will be on the left, the platform number (gate) will be on the right. Smaller monitors are not bilingual, platform is Binario in Italian, often shortened in "Bin."

A Rome-Florence high speed train will have Milano, Torino or Venezia as final destination. Going in the opposite direction it will be either Napoli or Salerno.

A month ago we took the FlixBus from Roma Tiburtina to Siena and back again. It takes you to the train station in Siena, which is, yes, at the bottom of the hill, BUT now there is an amazingly long series of escalators and moving ramps that take you from inside the shopping mall opposite the train station to the top. At the top of the escalators, you are a short walking distance to the Porta Camollia, one of the old entryways to Siena. Or you could take a taxi.

We stayed in an lovely Airbnb apartment on the Via Camollia and thought that we were in the very best neighborhood for us, very local, and if you keep walking along the Via Camollia it keeps changing its name but goes straight to the Campo in 10 minutes.

Here's a thing we learned about the escalators in a different part of town: we thought they were not working on our way back from a restaurant below the walls, but it turned out that if you approached one, it started moving again.

The FlixBus was great, very comfortable, nonstop, interesting scenery. My only tip is to get to the bus station 20 minutes early. On our Rome to Siena trip, the bus's toilet wasn't working so I was glad I had the extra time to find a bathroom, and the bus left early, once it had all its passengers on board. Also, from the Tiburtina metro station, it wasn't immediately clear where the bus station was (it's a real bus station, not just a bus stop), but we asked ("Doh-vay Fleecks-boose?"), and found it quickly. Going Siena to Rome, just follow the crowd to the Tiburtina metro.

We love the trains in Italy, but in some ways the buses like the FlixBus are easier, for instance, someone stows your luggage for you. Cheaper, too. Avoids the huge, busy train stations.

Have a wonderful trip!

Love you wonderful forum folks. Your experience-based tips and guidance are very helpful for a first-timer to Italy like me! How did I never get there sooner in my 40+ years on this planet I cannot explain nor defend! Happy to be rectifying that gap in my life's journey now.