Will be spending 2 weeks in April, visiting Rome, Florence, Venice. Is it worthwhile buying
our rail tickets in advance?

We lived in Italy for several years and never bought a ticket in advance, so its certainly not necessary. It certainly can't hurt though if you don't mind having a firm schedule.
I'd be interested in others opinions on this...

If you know the dates you want to travel, you can get big discounts on Trenitalia.

Regular fare from Rome to Florence on the fast AV train is 43€. Advance purchase discount can cost as little as 9€ (more likely to be 19€ or 29€). Discounts can sell out.
http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/inde...008916f90aRCRD

I bought a Eurail pass last time we were traveling between cities. I don't think we saved money plus we found ourselves going to the rail station to confirm things anyway. Next time I'll just buy tickets as we need them.

You might look at our trips for some ideas of things to do and our experiences in those places -

http://www.rimerson.com/

As kybourbon and Approach_Guides say, it really comes down to cost vs. flexibility. I also lived in Italy and we rarely bought tickets in advance, but we traveled a lot of Regionale trains... or we decided to go at the last minute.

I suppose if you were making a once-in-a-lifetime-trip to Italy, you MIGHT want things laid out and planned...or if you're ON a budget that may influence you to BOOK in Advance.

If you can get the reduced rates on either Trenitala or Italo, you can save up to 60%. If we planned a trip well in advance we would buy tickets at a discount and treat them like "airline" tickets.

Here's some info on the Trenitalia discount ticket options: http://www.roninrome.com/transportat...fare-structure

Good luck!

A very large proportion of Italy's major inter-city railway seats sold out completely during the recent Christmas-New Year break. Booking a month earlier, we found NO lunchtime seats in Standard class with either operator the day we wanted to travel from Florence to Rome.

Depends how close to Easter your "April" holiday is. But along the main Rome-Florence-Milan-Venice trunk line at a peak travelling time, the longer you leave booking, the likelier you are to have to upgrade to First and pay top whack even for that - if there are still seats left.

Given the recent boom in demand for Italian inter-city rail travel, be VERY careful about accepting advice from someone whose experience is limited to trundling round Victorian lines in the era before modern ticketing systems and revenue maximisation programmes.

The days of turning up and standing in the train corridor that I used to live in have disappeared forever on high speed trains.