parking in Rome
 

I have read several websites recommended by some of you about visiting and driving in Italy. Something I am alarmed about is the parking in Rome. I have read mostly about how hard it is to find parking and most likely your car will be stolen,and the hotels that have parking cram cars into small spaces often scratching and denting them. Is this accurate or is it all a ploy to scare people into taking the train to this city? And if it is true what has everyone else out there done while visiting. We are planning to drive through Italy and this concerns me.
Thanks

I dont want to scare you but I would NEVER drive in Rome. They are the craziest drivers, there is NO parking that I could see. Is there a way to drop the car off when you get there an djust use the trains?

I agree with jamikins. I'd never even consider driving in Rome. Take a look at your itinerary and rearrange it so you can drop your car outside Rome (suggest Orvieto), and take the train in. You don't need a car to get around in the city. Driving in the Italian countryside, however, is a little challenging until you get used to it, but it's fun.

There is usually parking at the train station which is fairly safe (your car may not be stolen but it may be broken into). It is expensive, however, if you are planning on parking it for more than a day. Your hotel may have a garage which will be your best bet. IF not, take the advice of others as well and park outside the city and take the bus in. The Metro in Rome is very good and easy to use.
The driving is crazy and scared me so much that I lived here 3 months before I would drive my car.
I hope that you are not planning on driving into Naples which has worse drivers and a higher crime rate.

No, Rome is as far south as we will go before going back up toward Zermatt and journey back through Switzerland to Munich..thanks for the info..I feel so sheltered, I live in a small town in California-we don't even lock our doors and the keys are in the car!!

Three cities I always recommend not driving are Rome, Paris and London. And Paris and London are a LOT easier than Rome.

driving in most parts of the Italian countryside is great - but do not take your car into Rome. If you can, arrange your itinerary so Rome is at the beginning or end. Then you can either pick up your rental after Rome or drop it off before going into the city.

trust us - it is not "a ploy to scare people into taking the train to this city". Sane people take the train.

debbeymer: we were posting at the same time. If you can't change your route you could consider renting two different cars - one for before and a different one for after Rome.

We will be using Munich as a base....I have family there. I don't know how long we will take driving to Rome so I wouldn't know when to reserve the car to leave from there!? I will look into parking it somewhere outside of town or ??? We are not going until next summer so I have time to figure out what to do. Thanks for the input..I love this place

i don't understand this ridiculous paranoia about driving in rome (or paris or london). it is absolutely no different than traffic in new york (or chicago or LA). and parking options are about the same.

the likelihood of your car being stolen or broken into is no different than in any american city. leaving valuables out in plain sight or parking a mercedes on a secluded side street will elicit the same response from thieves the world over.

and no, dorothy, rome is not hazelton, neb. where plump golden retrievers loll about carefully manicured lawns. use some common sense: lock the vehicle and pay the extra surcharge for insurance. you'll be fine.

OK...I'll jump into the middle of this one...Debbeymer you might want to consider this option: if you are interested in going directly to Rome from Munich and have no particular plans to amble around in between, you could take the train from Munich..the trip takes between 7-8 hours, there are several departures every day, no changes are required, and the route will take you over the Brenner Pass and through the Dolomites which are very pretty.
I don't think you really need a car in Rome if you're willing to take public transport which is plentiful and easy to use..walking to Rome's major sites isn't that hard and taxis will cost less than the car rental.
I've noticed a lot of people who go to Europe drive around and that is great because it does offer maximum flexibility. But I also think a lot of Americans are reluctant to take advantage of Europe's great public transport simply because they think it will be like Amtrak or they live in a city where decent public transport doesn't exist.
It's your vacation, you haven't even left yet, and you're ALREADY stressing about the car/drive thing...hope it all works out.

Sorry, got to disagree with you Subcon. I have lived in London and driven there extensively and I found Rome to be much worse. In fact, I found LA not that bad (nowhere near the M25 on a Friday night or the M5/M6 interchange) - but agree about parking in NYC. If you want to see serious congestion, just shut a lane on any British motorway. There are daily radio reports here of people taking a few hours to drive a couple of miles. The UK has a population about a quarter of that of the US, but crammed into an area not far off the size of California.
We hired a car in Germany recently and one of the conditions was that it didn't enter Italy. On another occasion we parked in Naples and were advised by the hotel to remove the car radio, open the glove box and leave a window open to prove that there was nothing in the car to steal. Had to do that in the US?
What I remember in Rome was these little Fiat 500's just stopping and leaving the car in the middle of the road whilst the owner went about their business!!

We parked at a huge underground parking lot under a park. (Don't remember the name). Two suggestions-one,if you do park there, draw a map of the location of your car. We had no problems there with the exception of trying to find our car. Second, get a very good map of Rome roads. We had no difficulty getting into the center of Rome (all roads lead to Rome!). But leaving Rome was much more difficult with a tangle of confusing streets and poor directional signs. Also, realize that motorcyles and bus don't follow the same rules as cars. It's difficult to drive there, but not much worse than NYC. Take your time, ignore honks, and be prepared with maps.

Here's an idea bassed on Intrepid's post above. Consider taking the train from Munich to Rome, tour Rome, take the train to Orvieto to pick up your car, continue your trip in the car through Switzerland back to Munich. Suggest you check out www.autoeurope.com for your car rental; many Fodorites have been happy with the company.

Based, not bassed :-[

I'll totally disagree with subcon's comment that driving in Rome is no different than driving in NYC. There's a big difference. Sure, NYC has congestion, but the city is laid out in a grid which makes it must easier to figure out how to get out of the city! Rome is one big maze! Further, there are a lot more parking lots and garages to choose from in NYC than in Rome. And, finally, you don't have to content with the vast army of motorbikes and motorcycles in NYC that you do in Rome.

We drove into Rome and kept the car over night for a day trip to Pompeii the next morning. Driving into Rome was horrible. Our choice of exit to enter Rome from wasn't the best. We hit unebeleivable traffic and our map was useless (didn't indicate one-ways, missing roads, closed roads, etc.). When we finally got near our hotel (in the historic center, near the pantheon), we could not for the life of us figure out how to get to it by car. I had to walk to the hotel and have them give me very specific directions (we could see where it was located but the roads leading to it were so small, we couldn't even fit through some of them with a car). Then we had to hire a cab to follow to a garage where we parked the car for the night (it was near trevi fountain). The next morning we got an early atart and somehow left Rome fairly easily. On our return we dropped the car off near termini station, and that too, was not so bad. Forget trying to find a parking place. If your hotel can park the car for you, even better (and it's worth the extra $$) but put the car in a lot. The few street spots there are, you need a resident permit for.

BTW, I live in NYC and Rome is MUCH worse!

Driving in Rome isn't exactly a picnic, but neither is it something to get paranoid about. We've done it a few times and survived just fine. On our last trip, we drove in from the south and parked at a HUGE parking lot at the southern entrance to the city and took la Metropolitana into town from there.
Looking back on the experience, the pickpockets on the metro were a much bigger hassle than driving into the city - for the most part, there was so much traffic nobody was going more than about 5 mph, albeit in that haphazard, frenetic Roman way.
On a previous trip, when we actually had a car within the city, I do recall that finding a parking space was a nightmare and that all Rome seemed to consist of Senso Unico signs, such that we were forced to traverse the city by continually making smaller and smaller concentric left-turn circles.

okay, perhaps i overstated the comparison btwn NYC and rome. yes, it's true that there is way more two wheel traffic in europe than in the US, but it's the ability to flow with any traffic pattern which discriminates the NY driver from any other.

driving in NYC is like participating in a ballet. much the same is true of driving in rome or paris. one becomes acclimated to the vaguries of style.

i doubt if a NY cab driver would have any problem with any major city in europe.

be that as it may, perhaps not all of us are so adventuesome.

(tongue poking deeply into cheek)

Whenever we have travelled in Europe on a car trip, we have never driven very far in a city. We park the car in a parkade and taken a cab to our hotel, and walked while in the city. Any city with little narrow streets that twist and turn like Rome is a nightmare for NA tourists.

We had no car on the trip we took to Rome. But my most recent Rome-like city where we had a car was Sevilla... we did what I suggested above and still got lost about three times leaving the city!