stephenbowman1913

Trying to decide whether to drive in to Rome and find a hotel with parking or stay on the outskirts of the centre or to stay further out and travel in daily. I'd prefer the first option but the travel zones seem a nightmare
any advice is more than welcome

J62

Neither of those 2 options sounds very good.
throwing out some ideas here....

option 3. Ditch the car - if it's a rental, return it.
option 4. Park somewhere remote (eg one of the airports, or long term parking at a close by train station or metro that's outside the city), and stay in Rome. Options may depend on where you are coming from...
option 5. Drive into Rome, and park in a garage near Termini.

bilboburgler

Who, apart from a born Roman, would want to drive in Rome?

Travel_Nerd

Is Rome your only city on this trip? Or are you perhaps coming from somewhere and/or going somewhere else after.

As already mentioned, having a car IN Rome is a hindrance and frankly unnecessary. There is an excellent public transport system in the city to get you around to any of the major sites.

stephenbowman1913

no I shall be travelling to rome after leaving Venice. And shall drive towards naples after a few days in Rome. Is there any advise on decent locations to park up safely and get public transport

ekscrunchy

Take the train from Venice to Rome and then Rome to Naples. If you are going only to those three cities you do not need a car and a car would be a giant hindrance.

stephenbowman1913

now why didn't I think of that. I will probably do that thanks

bilboburgler

seat61.com to understand the various options

Traveler_Nick

Why?

There are hotels outside the ZTL. Go to booking.com and search for parking. Then read the actual add because some hotels claim parking but they just mean street parking.

Casa LaSalle has parking inside it's walls. For example. You'd just need to approach it from the west.

But why are you driving Venice to Naples?

stephenbowman1913

I was planning to go to herculaneum and pompeii after rome and then maybe carry on going south

Travel_Nerd

Pompeii and Herculaneum, you can get to via train from Naples. Not sure where you'd be continuing onto in the south. Depending on your additional points, a car may also be unnecessary.

Is this your first trip to Europe? Maybe you can advise of your full itinerary so we get the full picture. Also when you're traveling.

Jean

Rome doesn't have just one ZTL, and there are different regulations depending on the zone and the type of vehicle (gas/diesel/electric). When pollution reaches certain levels and advisories are issued, the restrictions change, so you need to stay connected to news sources... and have alternate plans figured out.

https://www.expatslivinginrome.com/r...ato-ztl-italy/

Unless you plan to do a some exploring on secondary roads between the big cities, having a car isn't necessary. Train journeys are often faster than driving, and finding parking outside of ZTLs will be an issue everywhere. Herculaneum and Pompeii are easy to reach by commuter train from Naples and Sorrento. If you hoped to drive the road along the Amalfi Coast, you need to check current restrictions. In the last couple of years, access to the road has depended on your license plate number (even on even-numbered days, odd on odd).

If you plan to rent a car in Venice and return it somewhere in southern Italy, you should investigate the one-way rental drop fee.

SusanP

Lots of good advice here. Train is definitely the best for all of what you want to do.

bhuty

Everyone with an opinion is going to have strong views on this - and you'll get different opinions all claiming to be right. So the answer is it always depends on how you travel. A few perspectives (which others will disagree on)

1) Rome by foot is a lot of walking if you are trying to see all the main things. We did 20kms in one day and we didn't even push it hard. So the answer to your question depends on how much walking you like to do in a day and how many days you have available.
2) There are options to walking but they all cost a lot of money except for the scooter or bike hire. You'll see a lot more if you can do a scooter or bike (i mean the stand up motorised scooters). At some point in time paying for a ride on those little bikes with 2 seats in the back (like a tuk tuk) will seem very much worth it.
3) seeing rome using a vehicle has a whole range of issues attached - one of them is that one of the joys of walking is being able to explore the unexpected wheras in a car or bus you zoom right by it and you're lucky to know if its even there let alone be able to see what it is.
4) driving everywhere in Italy is crazy and the closer you get into the city centre of rome the crazier it is. I dropped off a rental car at the main terminal (termini) and was glad to be out of the car. I also picked up another car and had to drive in the city centre and over to Prati and was glad to to get out of the city. Avoid driving in the city centre if you can but if you do then get some days of experience behind your seatbelt before you tackle the city centre.
5) despite what they say it is untrue to think that you can stay in a hotel that is close to EVERYWHERE. regardless of hotel you'll be doing a lot of walking and the only way to reduce walking is to pay money.
6) regardless of what they say is your best option the truth is that if the argument is based on price then its a wasted argument. generally speaking you'll pay more for a city centre hotel and less for a not so city centre hotel so the extra cost of trasnport for a not so centrally located hotel has to potential to even out the costs. Plus remember that the cost you pay is for what YOU VALUE - not what we value. For example, if you value quiet and peaceful rest then you will pay more for it either in a more expensive centrally located hotel or by paying extra for transport in a not centrally located hotel. If you value TIME then you pay more to reduce time either by paying for taxis (for example) or for paying for a centrally located hotel AND/OR paying for reduction in time by an increase in noisy neighbourhoods....everything is a cost/benefit scenario....so any arguments that try to win based on cost of hotel alone is not considering all of the factors that are important to YOU

That said: here is my 2 cents worth
Parking will cost you money in most instances - so add that to the cost of the hotel. You might decide to have NO parking but use that cost for taxis. The problem with driving in the city is NOT the driving (despite my earlier comment) the problem with driving in the city is the PARKING. The most likely scenario is that you'll not use the car AT ALL while in rome. OR you'll drive it to a spot before 7am in the morning to get a good car parking spot and then you'll leave it there and walk around all day until you pick it up in the afternoon. eg You want to drive to the Colosseum? Fine - if you don't want to park. If you want to park then good luck. Therefore - in my opnion parking is the main reason that you don't need a car for rome.

I stayed at Hilton Inn Claridge for 2 reasons
1) I spent a few days using this as a base WITH a car to explore outside of rome
2) I got rid of the car for the 3 days that I spent visiting the centre of rome and caught a taxi to my starting point and then walked from there then caught a taxi back again. This gave me a quiet location at a low enough taxi cost to make it cheaper than staying in the city centre. This is just ONE example of a suitable outskirts location.

So your choices are actually
1) Stay in the city centre NO CAR, or
2) Stay in the outskirts (still very close but not in the city centre) and then taxi (or bus in but to be honest taxi is worth it especially if you choose to see the major free sites super early in the morning)

Both choices are good - depends on what's important to you

bhuty

There is probably a EUR100 one ay drop off fee if you dumped the car while in rome and then you'll pay that again when you dump it in Naples - depending on the cost of parking you'll need to factor in the cost of renting a car that you won't be using in order to avoid the one way drop off fee.

You can stay a little further out like in the EUR area for cheaper or perhaps free parking. For example the holiday Inn at Parco Medieci (I've buggered up the spelling) costs EU7 to park per day and I don't think you need to be staying there to park there. Then its an easy train into the city from there. Again going back to my other example of Hilton Inn Claridge, the parking there was a lot more but I could see a parking garage across the road which I assume was much less.

bhuty

Sorry Stephen. the answer to why are you driving is ....you want to drive. If you want to drive then drive.

I drove Rome to Florence to Bologna to Venice to Verona.....because that's my preferred way to travel. Id train is your preferred way then train, I'm not trying to talk you out of it but what's your preferred way to travel and why? (rhetorical only - you don't owe me an answer). if you want to drive but just not sure about it then i can tell you I loved it. Crazy crazy experience as I'm from Aus (oz) and by crazy I mean scary at times.

SusanP

It's not really true that scooter or bike are the only reasonable forms of getting around Rome other than walking. The bus system is very good and inexpensive, a lot cheaper than taxis. If one likes to take taxis and it's in the budget, that's fine, but keep in mind that a lot of taxi rides will add up. If you don't mind that, go for it.

One other thing to keep in mind is that if you want to enjoy a nice leisurely dinner in the city and enjoy things lit up at night, you'll be getting back to your hotel later if you're staying outside the city. I like a short walk back to my hotel after a long day. Staying outside the city also makes it very difficult to stop back at the hotel during the day for a break or to go back for a little rest before going out for dinner.
Just some things to consider.

bhuty

My advice is this:
First plan how you want to spend your time then your budget (if cost is of the same importance to you as it is to some people who like to be known as a fodorite) THEN decide on the location of the hotel.

To get you started on thinking through how to spend you time you might look at rome in this broad way (just as a jumping off point - not as a definitive guide of the only way to see it)
1) Make a triangle from the spanish steps to the Pantheon and to Rome termini and that's one big area
2) everything south of that (colosseum, roman forum and jewish quater) is another main area
3) The vatican, prati and trastevere as another big area.

whether or not you approach it in this way doesn't matter, but this enables you to see what 3 days could look like
or you give the pantheon and jewish quater (including campo di fiori and place navona) as its own area and now you have 4 main areas over 4 days.
From either 3 areas or 4 areas you'll be able to use big braod brush strokes to veyr quickly get an idea of where you want to stay to keep your walking distance to a minimum and bussing distance to a maximum - i'm not sure if I mentioned busses or not previously but it seems that this was a minor oversight of which I humbly apologise to the fodor gods. However, I do still stand by my point that walking and forms of personal wheeled transportation (eg bikes) give an advantage over cars and mass transit option in that you are more able to see things along the way that you didn't know about before.

My view of rome is this..... you can see it in 2 days or still not see it in 2 years. Its that kind of city. There's something everywhere to see and you'll never see all of it

To give you an example of a taxi cost;
We picked up a taxi in one of these very very far away locations that are really expensive (Hilton Inn Clartdge) took the taxi to the spanish steps, then to the trevi fountain (same taxi all of the time - he waited for us while we took photos and did the tourist things) then took the taxi to the Vatican - now the distance from Trevi fountain to St Peter's square is right on 4kms - thats 4kms. And the total distance of our full journey was 10kms and the taxi cost us less than EU30 but we rounded up to 30 cos he was awesome.

TDudette

No help with Naples, and of course no cars in Venice. I daresay that even taking only cabs in Rome would cost less than car rental/parking. No one has mentioned the tram system in Rome.

In general, I'm for the convenience of "living" right there. Being able to drop off purchases with ease, change shoes, or even rest is great. What are your interests, stephenbowman1913?

CounterClifton

I do agree that Rome's buses aren't too bad. Could have just been consistently lucky, having limited experience overall. I managed to mess up my foot shortly before our trip and found the buses were a welcome relief. With one exception, they seemed to show up where they were meant to, and within a few minutes of the published time. But the occasional taxi did help supplement, such as going from our hotel in Trastevere to Central terminal in a more time efficient way and I thought the cost was very reasonable. My view of that may be skewed by crazy taxi prices at home though. I didn't end up loving Rome, FWIW. But transportation wasn't a contributor to that feeling. ps, I've driven in some less than motorist-friendly places before like Thailand, Morocco and Romania and you still couldn't pay me to drive in Rome's centre.

We found the citymapper app very useful in manoeuvring the buses.