Italy Train Tickets--buy now, when we get there?

Take a look at the website of the Italian railways www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en to see the considerable discount you can get with advance booking on the high-speed and intercity trains, if you know your itinerary and don't mind to be tied to a specific train (date and hour). The booking process is simple and reliable: payment by credit card and an emailed pdf for printing at home. Remember to use the Italian originals for place names!

You have three levels of ticket pricing. Super Economy, Economy, and Base. SE and E are discount tickets with restrictions - no change, no refund of SE and E. Base is the standard price for walk up tickets. Refundable and changeable for one hour after the train leaves the station. The number of discount tickets are limited per train, per schedule, and sell out fairly earlier. Those tickets are best bought on line about 90 to 120 days out. All trains except Regionale trains require a reservation. Regionale train tickets should be bought at the station the day or day before departure - never on-line. On Regionale trains you just get on and grab any seat or wait till a seat opens.

Karen,

The "simple answer" is that if you want to save money with discounted tickets and are willing to commit to a specific departure, then buying advance tickets is a good idea. If you want more spontaneity in the departure time, then buying tickets locally is a better idea.

On the routes that you mentioned, you'll be travelling via the high speed trains, which have compulsory seat reservations that are specific to train, date and departure time. As mentioned in a previous reply, some of the tickets are non-refundable and non-changeable once purchased. On those routes you'll have the option of travelling via the Freccia (Trenitalia) or Italo high speed trains.

One point to note is that many cities in Italy (and elsewhere) have more than one rail station so you'll need to know which stations you'll be using when you buy tickets. You can easily buy tickets from the rail networks or at trainline.eu as they sell tickets for both at the same price as charged by the networks.

One final point to note is that if travelling on Regionale trains using locally purchased tickets, you MUST validate the tickets prior to boarding the train on the day of travel, or risk hefty fines which will be collected on the spot!

If you go to the trenitalia website and enter Firenze to Roma for tomorrow vs 3+ months out you'll see the high speed train prices from 45€ per person walk up prices vs 19,90€ if purchased in advance.

I have bought 9Euro tickets from Milano to Venezia up to 120 days in advance, huge savings if you can commit to super-economy policies.