Train Schedules in Italy
Travel Day versus Travel Month
A rail day is considered any travel between midnight of one day to midnight of the following day, in other words, a 24 hour period. During this period, you may take as many train trips as you like and it will only count as one day. A good tip to know is the 7pm rule: if you board a direct, overnight train after 7pm, only the following day of travel is counted. On your pass, you would write the day of arrival on the pass prior to boarding the overnight train. Some individual country passes do not offer this rule.
A rail month is calculated as a calendar month. For example, if your pass begins on January 2, it is valid until midnight on February 1.
Train schedules tend to be fairly consistent from day to day. Sundays and holidays are the exceptions to that rule, however, when trains run less frequently. Note that on some public holidays trains can get booked up well in advance by locals who are traveling to visit family.
Thanks to our partnership with Trenitalia, ItaliaRail has direct, real-time connectivity to Trenitalia's schedule and reservation system, allowing us to give you the best fares and most up-to-date availability. Many of our most popular routes have trains leaving every half hour, but some destinations have less frequent service. Use our search tool to browse train schedules and find the trains that suit your itinerary best.
The main hall of every train station in Italy contains a departure and arrival board. In addition to the track numbers, these boards also display each train's final destination along with the stops made en route.
In each train station, pocket timetables are available free of charge. These "mini-timetables" typically list departures and arrivals between two specific points or regions. Look for them near the rail information centers.
An additional source for detailed schedules is the Rail Information Center itself. Utilizing computerized reservation systems means staff can make short work of finding a schedule or routing you to your city of choice. Best of all, the service is free.
Thanks to the internet, printed rail schedules are no longer common.
Train schedules are uploaded by the rail company twice a year. Usually it happens mid June and mid December. It can happen that close to the travel date (mid JUL and DEC) the system does not reply with schedules. The issue is out of our control, and always the schedules are loaded. We ask you to be patient as the whole country in Italy suffer the same twice a year.