Rome Airport-FCO into Rome

The airport shuttle, direct train.

Airport shuttle or Taxi: Pro: goes direct from airport to your hotel; Con: costs more than public transportation

Leonardo Express to Termini combined with one of walking/Metro/bus, depending on your hotel location: Pro: cheap, good way to get "into" the experience of being in Rome, some people find walking combats jet lag; Con: not as convenient, difficult if you have a large number of people/bags, Metros/busses/street signs can be confusing & Metros/busses can be crowded

That said, I took the train to Termini and the Metro to the Vatican Museum stop without any trouble. It was 7:30am on Sunday, so no crowds. I did get lost walking from the Metro to the hotel, but it wasn't that big of a deal and made for a good story when I got home!

Dave - see previous post titled, "Termini or taxi," dated 12/18/07.

I booked a shuttle through www.viator.com which is a thrid party booking site and had no problems. Take the address of the hotel with you the hotel I was at changed names recently and the cabbies/shuttle drivers got confused. I heard the train is easy. If you use a cab make sure its a legit one and settle on a price before they put your luggage in the cab.

We took the train into the city and they took a taxi. We didn't check the price for the cab from the train station and landed up paying almost the same for the train+ taxi as if we had taken the van service our hotel was going to hire for us.

We took the train into Rome and then walked to our hotel - travel only with carry-on though.

I have done the train and then the bus sytsem. It worked well - but make sure you are packing light. Also if you do it this way, it is best to have a map of Rome before you get there. When I arrived it was very late at night - last train out of the airport and all newstands were closed so I could not buy a map there or in Rome. The train from the airprt then the subway would work well too - the subways were not operating that late at night when I did it.

Kevin makes a good point about the map.
For our walk from the train station, I had printed out a Google map and used a highlighter over our chosen route. It's easy to get disoriented the minute you step out of a station. I also brought a compass with, which was one of the best things I could have brought with - and cheap!

We were so glad to have used a private shuttle after the long flight last month. We're a family of three and we brought two suitcases plus three rather large carry-ons. The shuttle was an SUV-type vehicle so it had plenty of room for us and our luggage. The driver met us just outside of customs and dropped us off on the piazza near our rental. It cost 35 euros before tip and was well worth it to us. (See http://www.romeshuttlelimousine.com/ for the service we used.)