Getting to the Eternal City and other Rome, Italy Transportation Tips

'Mode': TO
Category: Airplane
Getting TO/AROUND: How did I get there?? Well, since I live in Mexico I had no other choice but to get there by plane, as most of you will have to do as well :) The Fiumicino airport is about half an hour from the town, but there are trains that take you from the airport to Termini train/metro station (near downtown Rome and with lots of bus terminals) which run every half an hour and are very efficient & comfortable, and PUNCTUAL too! That is not very usual in the Roman (or rather Italian) transportation system ;)

If you're arriving from somewhere else in Europe, you may arrive at the Ciampino airport...... this one is small but still well furnished and organized, and you can get from the airport to Termini by bus+metro (take a COTRAL bus to the Anagnina metro station and then use the metro red line: it's about 13 stations from Anagnina to Termini), or with shuttles that take you directly to Termini (by Via Marsala). Same way if you want to go to the airport from Rome.

If you travel by train you will also arrive into the Termini central train station.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Subway/Metro
Getting TO/AROUND: The public transportation system is fairly efficient and connects you to most zones in town. The best way to move around is by bus & metro (this latter having only 2 lines: A & B), although there are new metropolitan trains that take you farther than the metro (if you need to move far from downtown) and are included in the metro/bus fare system (i.e. you don't have to pay extra to ride them, you can do it with a normal ticket as long as you don't leave Rome and its surroundings).

There are tickets that are valid for 75 minutes (used to be 90 some years ago), a whole day, a week or a month. Buy the one that suits you better according to the time you'll stay there: the longer the validity, the cheaper they are (a weekly ticket was 24,000 lire [about 12 US dollars], a monthly ticket used to be 50,000 lire [25 USD]; you can get these tickets with a discount if you're a student or a senior citizen). The 1-trip or even 1-day tickets are not really worthwhile buying unless you'll be in Rome for a very short period of time and will use the metro/buses very often, which in Rome isn't really necessary. You can buy them at most newspaper stands or metro stations, and make sure you buy them before riding either the buses or the metro/trains (and in this case make sure to valid them on the machines there are at the entrance). Night buses are also very useful and take you to the main spots around the town between midnight and 5 AM. However, Rome is very worth seeing by walking around its little streets, squares, monuments....

NOTE: The prices mentioned above are in Euros now, but the US Dollar reference I posted can give you an idea of what the prices were like a few years ago..... The current price (2007) for a single trip ticket - which is the only one I used this time so I can't tell what the other tickets cost - is: 1 EUR per ticket, valid for 75 mins OR one metro ride (i.e. you can transfer bus-to-bus or metro-to-bus freely within the 75 mins. but you cannot use the metro more than once with the same ticket: you can transfer between lines but you can't go out and then back in).

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