Trenitalia is a website that you will need to use for many reasons. These include booking tickets or deciding whether to purchase a rail pass.
Good news! The English version is actually quite good. It is not a given that an Italian site has an English version, even if it does have a small flag indicating one. Trenitalia has all the necessary translations.
The bad news is? Although the front end is well translated, there are still areas where you will need to be able to understand some Italian in order to find the answers to your questions. The site is messy. These user tips should help you navigate the site and find what you are looking for.
Italy Train Tickets
Trenitalia can be bypassed entirely and tickets can be purchased before you even leave your home using ItaliaRail, an American-based company that works with Trenitalia in order to provide real-time connectivity to the Italian rail reservation systems. This allows you to get the lowest fares and the most current availability without needing to translate your itinerary into English. ItaliaRail offers online customer support and most tickets can be downloaded instantly.
Italy Explained is an ItaliaRail affiliate partner. This means that if I refer you to ItalyRail for tickets, I will get a small commission. It doesn’t cost anything extra. We appreciate your support.
Start on , the English version Trenitalia. You’ll find a search box at the top of the screen with the name “Ticket”. This is the search box you’ll need.
Select “Single” to purchase a one-way ticket or “Single/Return”, and then enter the names of the “From” and “To” locations into the boxes. Click the calendar icon to select a date, and then type in the hour in the box to choose a time. To view the search results, choose how many children and adults are travelling in the group and click “Send”.
After you have entered all the information, here is what a result page looks like.
Let’s take a look at the results page and see what we can find. This will allow us to focus on what is important and leave out the rest.
You will see the text “Trip Data : GOING” above the red banner, which means that this ticket is one-way. If you are looking at a round-trip route, you can select your outgoing ticket from this screen and the next screen will show you your return options. You can simply double the cost of your ticket to estimate its price.
The trip information that you have entered is at the top of the gray banner. You can adjust it here to change alternate dates or make changes to it, rather than having to go back to the main page.
These columns should be easy to understand, and there are a few notes.
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- Any changes that are required for a trip will be noted in the “Duration”, column along with the phrase “Travel without train change.” This column also lists the trains that are required for that journey under the “Train” column.
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- By selecting “Le Frecce”, you can only search high-speed trains.
- The default search results in the “Prices” column are for 2nd class. Click the drop-down menu beside the ticket price and type “Select” to change it to 1st class.
These are other helpful tips to use the Trenitalia website.
Site is in English. However, the names of cities and towns are in Italian.
When you try to search for tickets from Florence and Venice, you get an error message saying that the stations are invalid. Last time you checked, both cities are still in Italy. What gives?
Firenze, Venezia are the Italian names for these cities. For any town or city you are looking up, you will need to use the Italian names. The glossary section of this book contains a list of many Italian cities names. If the place you want to visit is not listed, you can search them on Wikipedia.
Italic dates place the month in the middle.
Trenitalia automatically fills out the date field for you if you choose travel dates by clicking on the calendar icon. If you choose to enter the date yourself, make sure to include the day, the month, and the year. August 10h is now 10-08, not 08-10.
Trentialia is open 24 hours a day.
Italian train schedules follow the 24-hour clock. 1pm is written as 13.00 – writing 1am means 1am. It’s easy to understand the 24-hour clock, but it’s important to remember to use it when booking tickets. Otherwise you might end up on a train in the early hours of the morning when you are more likely to be asleep. You will need to enter the number before the colon, which is a 13 for 1pm.
There may be more than one train station in a city.
Numerous train stations are found in Italy. They don’t have to be large cities to make this possible. You can search for the station you are looking for in the “transportation” section of the Wikipedia page. It should indicate whether it is a major train station and what its name is. Or you can guess.
The first thing you need to look for in order to make an educated guess is the word “Centrale.” This word will be located next the station name of the town you are visiting. After all, the word means “central”. If you don’t see it, the next thing to search for is “Tutte le Stazioni” following the town name. This is the equivalent of “all stations” and search results will likely show this station as the first or most frequently.
Trenitalia’s schedule is only published a few months ahead of time.
You won’t find the exact train schedule and ticket prices for the trip you are looking for, even if you search for it six months in advance. To get an estimate, the Trentialia calendar is only available for a few months ahead.
I pick a date at least one month in advance and choose the same weekday as the day I will be traveling. This will give an idea of how many trains run on that particular day, what time they are running, and how much each ticket costs.
For regional trains (i.e. The schedule is only sent out for regional trains (i.e. slower) about one week in advance. You can re-select your search results to select a date within the next few days if tickets aren’t available online for booking more than a week in advance.
Customers used to have difficulties using non-European credit card.
Although Trenitalia’s website makes it appear that anyone can search for and purchase train tickets online, customers from all over the world have never been able to buy tickets online from Trenitalia. The site was not designed to allow European citizens without credit cards to make a purchase.
According to the Trenitalia website, a new system was implemented in late 2010. This will allow you to book train tickets online regardless of where your credit card was issued. You don’t have to wait for tickets if you run into problems. ItaliaRail has a partnership with Trenitalia. They offer the same ticket prices, including the same discounted tickets called “economy and “super economy” that are sometimes available on Trenitalia. ItaliaRail also accepts all credit cards. Read about the etickets offered to make sure you understand what you are getting before you purchase.
