I am traveling this May to Rome, Then on to Naples, Salerno, Matera, Alberobello, Assisi and back to Rome. I would prefer to travel this trip by train but I am thinking that renting a car might be the easiest way to make all these stops. I see that all these towns have public parking. Any suggestions or opinions would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Bob
Posted by
804 posts
They are certainly all accessible by public transportation and so easy! Although, you are looking at a widespread itinerary. How much time are you looking at?
Posted by
San Diego, California, USA
1845 posts
These are all accesible via public transportation but Matera and Alberobello may be faster by car. Transportation in this area tends to be "hub and spoke" from Bari so you will probably have to go Matera > Bari and the Bari > Alberobello where if you had a car it's probably and 1.5 hours drive directly between them. Is that worth the hassle of renting a car? That's up to you.
You have a disparate list of very specific places for this trip. Is there some agenda you're following? Assisi is the real outlier here since everything else is Rome and south and you will spent an entire day getting up to Assisi. Even from Rome Assisi is not the easiest place to get to and you will likely spent 3+ hours making this happen. But even Bari to Assisi will be an all day travel adventure or at least a 6 hour drive.
While Assisi is much too far from Rome for a day trip if you did Assisi from Rome at the start of your trip and concentrated on everything south it might make some more sense. The public transportation infrastructure on the Rome/west side of Italy is faster and more built out. If you have to use the trains on the east/Adriatic side of the country this would be much slower. You could get from Assisi to Salerno much faster passing through Rome than Bari to Assisi.
Sounds like a very interesting trip - just make sure you have enough time in each place to make the travel in between worth it.
=Tod