Tips for Using the Trenitalia Website
Since you’ll need to use the Trenitalia site for several possible reasons – deciding whether to get a rail pass or use train tickets, looking up train schedules, booking train tickets – I thought I’d offer some tips on navigating the site.
The good news? The English version of the site is actually pretty good. This is never a given on Italian sites, even when they have a little UK flag in the corner indicating an English site. With Trenitalia, the stuff you’ll need to use is well-translated.
The bad news? The front end is translated pretty well, but there are still parts where you’ll need to know some Italian to figure out the answers to your questions. Plus, the site’s kind of messy. I hope these user tips help you get through the mess to find what you need.
Buy Italy Train Tickets
You can also skip the Trenitalia site altogether and get your tickets before you leave home from ItaliaRail, a US-based company that partners with Trenitalia to offer real-time connectivity to the Italian rail reservation system. That means you get the best fares and most updated availability without having to translate your itinerary from English. Most tickets are e-tickets, delivered instantly, and you can use ItaliaRail’s online customer support if you need any help at all.
Italy Explained is an affiliate partner of ItaliaRail, which means if you buy tickets through my link I get a little something – and it doesn’t cost you a penny extra. Thanks for your support.
Start on the English version of Trenitalia. Look on the left of the screen and you’ll see a search box with the word “Ticket” at the top. This is the box you need.
Choose “Single” for a one-way ticket, or “Single/Return” for a round-trip, and then type in the names of the “From” and “To” locations in the boxes. Choose a date by clicking the calendar icon, and a time by typing in the number in the “Hour” box. Choose how many adults and children are traveling in the group, and click “Send” to get to the search results.
Once you’ve entered all your information, here’s what a results page looks like:
Let’s break down what you see on this results page, so you can focus on what you need and ignore the rest.
Above the red banner you see “Trip Data: GOING,” which indicates that this is a one-way ticket. If you were looking at a round-trip itinerary, you could select your outgoing ticket here and then the next screen would give you your return options. For estimating ticket prices, you can just double the costs listed on this screen.
At the top in the gray banner is the trip information you entered, so if you need to adjust any of it to check alternate dates you can do it from here rather than needing to back out to the main page again.
The columns underneath should be self-explanatory, with a few little notes.
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- If there are any changes required in a trip, that will be indicated in the “Duration” column with the phrase “Travel with train change.” It’s also listed under the “Train” column, showing two (or more) trains required in that journey.
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- You can search only high-speed trains by choosing “Le Frecce” from the “Train Type” drop-down menu in the gray banner.
- Default search results, in the “Prices” column, are for 2nd Class. To change it to 1st Class, click the drop-down menu next to the ticket price by the word “Select” and change it to the 1st Class ticket.
Here are some other useful tips for using the Trenitalia site.
The site’s in English, but city and town names are in Italian.
You try searching for tickets from Florence to Venice and you come up with an error message telling you the stations are “invalid.” Last you checked, both of those cities are still in Italy. So what gives?
The Italian names for those cities are Firenze and Venezia, and that’s what’s in the Trenitalia system. You’ll need to use the Italian names for any city or town you’re looking up. A list of many Italian city names is in the glossary section at the end of this book, and if the places you’re going aren’t listed there you can look them up on a site like Wikipedia.
Italian dates put the month in the middle.
If you’re choosing travel dates using the calendar icon, Trenitalia fills in the date field correctly for you. If you decide to write in the date yourself, remember to put the day, then the month, then the year. August 10h becomes 10-08, not 08-10.
Trentialia operates on the 24-hour clock.
Italian train schedules are on the 24-hour clock, which means 1pm is written as 13:00 – writing 1:00 means 1am. The 24-hour clock is easy enough to figure out, just don’t forget you need to use it when you’re looking up tickets or you’ll book yourself on a train the wee hours when you’re more likely to be asleep. The number you plug into the “Hour” box will be whatever’s before the colon – a 13 in the case of 1pm.
Some cities have more than one train station.
Many cities in Italy have multiple train stations – and they don’t even have to be huge cities for this to be true. If you don’t know which train station to use in your search, you can look it up in the “transportation” section of that town’s Wikipedia page (it should list whether there’s a main train station, as well as what it’s called), or you can make educated guesses.
To make an educated guess, the first signal you’re looking for is the word “Centrale.” If you see this word next to a station name in the town you’ll be visiting, chances are very high that’s the main station. The word, after all, means “central.” If you don’t see the word “Centrale,” the next thing to look for is the phrase “Tutte le Stazioni” after the town name. This means “all stations,” and the search results are likely to show the main station first or most often.
Trenitalia’s schedule only goes out a few months in advance.
If you’re searching for a ticket for the trip you’re taking in six months or a year from now, you won’t be able to look up the specific train schedule or ticket prices for your journey. Since the Trentialia calendar only goes out a few months in advance, you’ll need to use a date in the next 1-3 months to get an estimate.
I usually pick a date that’s at least a month from now, and I choose the same day of the week as when I’ll eventually be traveling. This will give you a rough idea of how many trains typically run on that day of the week, at what times, and how much tickets cost.
Note that for regional (i.e. slower) trains, the schedule only goes out about a week in advance. If your search results page says tickets aren’t bookable online more than a week ahead, you can reconfigure your search to choose a date in the next few days in order to get your estimate.
Some customers used to have problems using non-European credit cards.
Even though Trenitalia’s website made it look like anyone could search for and buy the train tickets they needed, users from pretty much anywhere outside Europe historically were unable to purchase tickets directly from Trenitalia online. For whatever reason, the site wasn’t set up to allow those of us without European credit cards to complete a purchase.
Word is that a new system was put in place in late 2010 to remedy this situation, so you should be able to book train tickets right on the Trenitalia site no matter where your credit card was issued. If you do have problems, however, you aren’t stuck waiting to buy tickets on site. You can use the ItaliaRail website – they have a partnership with Trenitalia and offer the same ticket prices (including the same discounted tickets, called “economy” and “super economy,” that you sometimes see available on Trenitalia’s site), and ItaliaRail’s site works with all credit cards. Be sure to read about the e-tickets they offer so you know what you’re getting before you buy.
12 responses to “Tips for Using the Trenitalia Website”
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Just bought train tickets. UJZ-VH3_GY3-TF8 cannot print tickets please advise
Hi, Mario – This isn’t the Trenitalia website; I don’t work for them. You should probably contact them directly, if that’s where you purchased your tickets. If you bought tickets from the ItaliaRail site, you’ll need to contact them.
Love this blog! Traveling w/ son as graduation gift, by train and AirBnB. Valuable info!
I’m so glad you’re finding the site useful, Carmen! Just in case you want all the train info in one handy place, I’ve got an ebook for sale: Italy Explained: Italian Trains
I have bought an “abbonamento di libero circulazione fs for stanieri for 8 days. 1st class. Can you please send me your advise on it with rates and other details.
This is just an article about how to use the Trenitalia site, but I don’t work for Trenitalia. You’ll need to contact them if you have questions about your purchase.
How do we find what train station is closest to any given hotel. We are traveling to Rome using Trenitalia but there seems to be many train stations in Rome and we want to find the one that is closest to our hotel
The main train station in Rome is Roma Termini, which – depending where you’re coming from – may be the best option. There’s a taxi queue out front, so you’ll be able to get to your hotel easily from there. Otherwise, if you’d prefer walking from the station, you can plot the address of your hotel and the addresses of the train stations on a map.
Great information, so helpful. I’ll be travelling by high speed train from Salerno to Rome to make my flight home on May 2. Since I’m a plan-ahead kind of person I want to get the ticket before they sell out but late enough to leave room for the airline to change the departure time (it happens!) Any suggestions as to a sweet spot…do it now…or wait? Appreciate your advice, thanks.
That “sweet spot” is impossible to identify with 100% accuracy, I’m afraid.
Hi,
What if I bought a ticket for a specific time and I wasn’t able to catch the train. Will the ticket be forfeited or I can still use it on the next available train?
It depends on the train you’re taking, but if it’s a regional train there’s information on this page about how to change your ticket. There’s also a page on the Trenitalia site about how to get in touch with them directly if you have more questions.