Trenitalia seating chart

Our experience with the Italian trains is that not all seats have a table. The table is only in the middle. Our experience with second class (probably different in first class) is that all seats face the middle of the car so half the car is facing forward and half the car is facing backwards and only in the middle where the seats face each other is there a table. I am sure there are other configurations that the is the one that we have seen commonly in our train travels. Our experience with Trenitalia has always been very good.

And in case anyone's curious, you can't know in advance which end of the train car will be the front, so don't bother trying to figure out the side with the best view or the side that's not in direct sunlight. That's because the trains switch direction when pulling into terminals such as in Florence and Rome. The terminals (as opposed to the pass-through stations) have the track ending in the train building. One end of the train pulls in first all the way to the end of the track, but then the train pulls out going in the direction it just came from, reversing the front and the back. Boy, that's hard to explain, when a diagram would illustrate it so much better. Anyway, I hope that makes sense.

Thank you Frank & Michael & yes Michael - that does make sense to me.

Yes, seats face each other and there is a table in between where you can work, eat, read or what have you. Under the table there is also an outlet for your laptop charger. If your itinerary is one served by both Trenitalia and Italo, check the prices and see who offers the best deal on that day. Both are good options. Trenitalia is the train operator owned by Ferrovie Dello Stato, a public company where the State Government is the sole stockholder. Ferrovie dello Stato is also the sole stockholder of RFI, the rail infrastructure owner.
Italo is run by NTV, a public company which is privately owned.

Thank you Roberto. I didn't realize the post took out the parenthesis I put in to show how the seat looked on the chart. So I'm glad you understood what I meant.

To piggy back on Andrea's questions, are the seat configurations shown on the Italo treno site generally accurate? I just booked tickets on Italo and was given the option to choose my seats which I did and I'm hoping they're accurate (so we can sit close to where the luggage storage is at 1 end of the car. The seating chart showed where the luggage storage is and I ed the 2 seats closest to it). I'm also wondering if the Italo trains are less likely to be effected by strikes whereas I've heard that there are frequent Trenitalia strikes...is this correct? I noticed that the Italo rates were almost identical to Trenitalia and opted for Italo since I've read that they're nice, new and comfortable cars.

Not all seatings have a table in the middle but most do. This is an unofficial diagram of some freccia trains.
https://sites.google.com/a/kazzeggio.com/frecciarossa/home

If you want, here are PDFs with the seat arrangements of the Frecciarossa on services with those 4 classes http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30006269/trainseatplans/Frecciarossa-4class-from-June-2012.pdf And for trains with just 2 classes: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30006269/trainseatplans/Frecciarossa-2class-from-June-2012.pdf

To be honest, I'm not sure how much people abide by the seat assignments, as I saw most people just sitting wherever they wanted to. Fortunately, it was never a sold out section, so it didn't seem to matter.