Ten days in Italy: Three Cities That Couldn't Be Less Alike

Rome for four nights, Florence for three, Venice for two, and two fast trains in between. No car, and no day that starts before nine.

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Length
10 days, 9 nights
Where you stay
Rome, Florence, Venice
Places
23 across 10 days
123
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Rome, Florence and Venice sit on one railway line, in the right order, an hour and a half and two hours apart. That is most of why this is the trip almost everybody takes first: ten days in Italy, and less than four hours of them spent moving.

The cities are nothing like each other, which is the other reason it works. Rome is ancient, enormous and layered on itself. Florence is small enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes and holds more Renaissance painting than most countries. Venice has no roads at all, and empties every evening when the day boats leave.

Nothing here needs a car, and hiring one would make the trip worse. All three cities restrict or ban traffic in the historic centre, parking is expensive where it exists at all, and the fine for driving into a limited traffic zone arrives by post four months later.

Highlights

  • The Forum, the Palatine and the Colosseum on one ticket, entered at the gate nobody queues at
  • St Peter's before the tour groups arrive, then an emperor's tomb across the river
  • The Uffizi in the morning and the sunset terrace above the Arno in the evening
  • Michelangelo's David, ten minutes from the cathedral
  • St Mark's the hour it opens, when the gold ceiling is lit and the square is still empty

Where to stay

Rome, four nights

Rome is the only one of the three cities where the sights are genuinely far apart, and the only one where you will want a bus or the metro at some point. Stay central anyway. Anywhere between the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori keeps most of your walking under twenty minutes and makes going back to the room in the afternoon realistic, which in August is the difference between four good days and four long ones.

The city is layered rather than arranged. A second century temple is a working parish church. A baroque square keeps the outline of a Roman stadium underneath it. The ruins are not on the way to the centre, they are the centre. Nothing about Rome was laid out for visiting, and that is most of the pleasure of it.

Florence, three nights

By train from Rome, Roma Termini railway station to Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station, about 232 km.

Florence is small. The walk from the cathedral to the Uffizi takes six minutes, and you can cross the historic centre end to end in twenty. Almost nothing here is spent getting anywhere, which is why three nights covers it comfortably and four in Rome barely does.

It was a banking city that spent its money on art for two hundred years, and the result is unusually concentrated: the David, the Botticellis, Brunelleschi's dome and Michelangelo's tombs are all within a few streets of each other.

Venice, two nights

By train from Florence, Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station to Venezia Santa Lucia railway station, about 204 km.

Venice is at its best when it is nearly empty, which happens twice a day. Before about ten in the morning the streets belong to the people who live and work here, with the delivery boats running the canals. After about six the day trippers and the cruise passengers have gone, and squares that were impassable at noon are yours.

Two nights gives you one of those evenings and two of those mornings, which is the least that is worth doing: Venice as a day trip is the version everybody complains about. Nothing needs a vehicle and most of it does not need the vaporetto either. The island is three kilometres end to end, and getting lost in it is not a mistake, it is the main thing to do.

Day by day

Day 1 in Rome

The first evening, on foot

Whatever time the flight lands, do not book anything that needs a ticket. Drop the bags and walk to the Pantheon.

It is free, open into the evening for much of the year, and it is the single best argument for coming to Rome at all. The Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the Trevi Fountain sit within ten minutes of each other, all free, all outdoors, and all better after dark than at noon.

  1. 17:00

    The Pantheon

    Religious

    Two thousand years old, roofed by the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built, and in continuous use the whole time. Go in and stand under the open hole in the middle of it.

  2. 18:00

    Piazza Navona

    Architecture

    Five minutes west. The square is this shape because it is built on the footprint of Domitian's stadium, and the buildings around it stand where the seating did.

  3. 20:00

    Dinner near Campo de' Fiori

    Eat

    Ten minutes south. One street back from the square itself the prices drop and the food improves, which is a rule that holds across the whole city.

  4. 22:00

    Trevi Fountain

    Other

    Worth the fifteen minute walk after dinner: floodlit, and marginally less impossible than at noon. Neptune, two tritons, and the end of an aqueduct that has been running since 19 BCE.

With more time: An early arrival leaves the whole afternoon free. Trastevere, across the river, is the oldest street plan in Rome and the best place in the city to eat.

Day 2 in Rome

The Forum, the Palatine and the Colosseum

One ticket covers all three, and where you use it decides how the day goes. The queue at the Colosseum entrance is the longest in Rome. Enter at the Palatine or Forum gate on Via di San Gregorio instead, with a timed ticket, and you will usually walk straight in.

It is about five kilometres of walking, most of it on two thousand year old paving, with very little shade. Take water and wear the shoes you would walk a hill in.

Coming up out of the Forum into the Colosseum, rather than starting there, means the day builds instead of peaking in its first hour.

  1. 09:00

    Colosseum

    Historic

    Fifty thousand people once sat in it. Finished around 80 CE and named after a colossal bronze of Nero that stood beside it, not after its own size. The arena floor and the upper tiers cost extra and are the version most visitors do not see.

  2. 11:00

    The Roman Forum

    Historic

    Less a ruin than a street plan: for a thousand years every law, trial and triumph in the Roman world happened in this small valley. Walk the raised path along the edge first to make sense of the shape, then go down into it.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch outside the gate

    Eat

    There is nothing worth eating inside the archaeological park. Come out, eat properly, and go back in on the same ticket.

  4. 14:15

    Palatine Hill

    Nature

    The hill the emperors actually lived on, and the quietest corner of the site. It looks straight down into the Forum, which is when the whole thing stops being rubble and starts being a city.

With more time: Nine kilometres on Roman paving is a full day. Trastevere is twenty minutes west across the river and is where to eat afterwards.

Day 3 in Rome

The Vatican side of the river

St Peter's is free, takes no bookings and opens at seven, so the only thing you control is the clock. Arrive before half past eight and security takes a few minutes. Arrive at ten and it takes an hour, in a queue that curls around the colonnade with no shade in it.

Castel Sant'Angelo afterwards gets a fraction of the traffic and is fifteen minutes along the river. It is also the better view: from the terrace you look back at the dome you were standing under an hour earlier.

The afternoon is where the Vatican Museums go if you want them, booked ahead for a late slot when the tour groups have thinned.

  1. 08:30

    St. Peter's Basilica

    Religious

    Enormous in a way photographs cannot carry, and proportioned so carefully that you do not notice until you see how small the people at the far altar look. Shoulders and knees covered.

  2. 11:00

    Castel Sant'Angelo

    Historic

    Built as Hadrian's mausoleum, then a fortress, then the pope's bolt hole along a covered wall from the Vatican, then a prison. Tosca throws herself off the terrace at the end of the opera. Go up.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch in Prati

    Eat

    The residential grid north of the Vatican walls, five minutes past where the queues end and where people who work nearby actually eat.

With more time: With no interest in the Sistine Chapel, spend the afternoon in the Villa Borghese gardens instead. They are twenty minutes east, free, and hold the Galleria Borghese, two rooms of Bernini sculpture that most short visits miss.

Day 4 in Rome

The Capitoline, and the last of the centre

Nothing today is more than twenty minutes from anything else, which makes it easy to cut short or stretch out depending on how the legs are holding up.

Start on the Capitoline. It is five minutes from the Forum and feels like a different city: a square Michelangelo laid out, on the hill Rome was governed from long before anything below it was built. Then work north to the steps everybody photographs.

  1. 09:30

    Museo Capitolino

    Culture

    The oldest public museum collection in the world, opened in 1471. The Dying Gaul and the colossal scattered fragments of Constantine, a hand here and a head there, are what people remember.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch near the Pantheon

    Eat

    Halfway between the museum and the steps, and a good place to sit for an hour before the trains north.

  3. 14:30

    Piazza di Spagna

    Architecture

    Twenty minutes north. The crowd thins near the top of the steps, and the streets running off the square are the expensive shopping ones.

With more time: The Baths of Caracalla are twenty minutes south and are the least visited great ruin in Rome: an imperial bath complex the size of a small town, with mosaic floors still in place.

Day 5 in Florence

North to Florence, and the cathedral before dinner

A mid morning train from Roma Termini has you in Florence by lunchtime with the afternoon intact. Santa Maria Novella station is a ten minute walk from the cathedral.

Do not attempt a museum today. Walk to the Duomo, walk around it, and let the size of Brunelleschi's dome land before climbing anything. It was the largest in the world when it went up in 1436, and nobody at the time knew how he intended to build it.

  1. 10:00

    Train to Florence

    Travel

    Roughly 1h35 on the fast service, centre to centre.

  2. 15:00

    Santa Maria del Fiore

    Religious

    The cathedral itself is free and the queue moves. The dome, the bell tower and the baptistery are a separate combined ticket with timed entry. Give your eyes a minute inside: it feels empty until they adjust, and then the stained glass appears.

  3. 16:30

    Piazza della Signoria

    Architecture

    Six minutes south, and effectively an open air sculpture gallery. The Loggia dei Lanzi along one side holds Renaissance work that would be indoors and ticketed anywhere else in the world.

With more time: If the dome climb appeals, book it now for a morning slot. Four hundred and sixty three steps, no lift, and the only way down is the way up.

Day 6 in Florence

The Uffizi, then across the river and up the hill

One big museum in the morning, then air. The Uffizi is why people come to Florence and it is also exhausting; three hours is a full visit, not a failure to finish.

After that the day gets easier. Over the old bridge into the Oltrarno, where the workshops and the reasonable prices are, then up to the terrace every photograph of Florence is taken from. Time it for late afternoon and stay for the light.

  1. 08:45

    Galleria degli Uffizi

    Historic

    Booked, first slot of the day. The building was a set of magistrates' offices, which is why it is a long corridor rather than a hall, and the Botticellis are about halfway down it.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch in the Oltrarno

    Eat

    Cross the river and eat on the far side. The prices drop the moment you are off the bridge.

  3. 14:30

    Ponte Vecchio

    Architecture

    The only bridge in Florence the retreating army left standing in 1944. Jewellers now; butchers until a Medici who used the corridor above it decided the smell was beneath him.

  4. 17:30

    Piazzale Michelangelo

    Architecture

    Twenty five minutes uphill on foot from the bridge, or a short bus if the legs have gone. Go for sunset, then walk down through the rose garden.

Day 7 in Florence

David, the Medici, and the tombs

Book the Accademia for the opening slot. The David stands at the end of a short corridor under a dome built for him, and the room in front of it fills by ten.

After that it is churches, which in Florence means major art with no queue. Both are five minutes from the cathedral and neither needs more than an hour.

  1. 08:15

    Galleria dell'Accademia

    Culture

    The original, not the copy standing in Piazza della Signoria. The unfinished Slaves in the corridor leading up to him, half emerged from the block, are for a lot of people the better half of the visit.

  2. 10:15

    San Lorenzo

    Religious

    The Medici parish church, with a facade that was never finished and an interior that is pure early Renaissance. Round the back, on a separate ticket, the Medici chapels hold nine Michelangelo sculptures.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch at the central market

    Eat

    Two minutes from San Lorenzo. Produce on the ground floor, food you can sit down with upstairs.

  4. 14:00

    Santa Croce

    Religious

    Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Rossini are all buried here, and Dante has a monument in a tomb he is not in, Ravenna having refused to give him back. Cimabue's flood damaged crucifix in the museum is the moving part.

With more time: With an extra night, this is the day to give to Siena: a coach from the bus station beside Santa Maria Novella, and the clearest surviving picture of what an Italian city looked like before the Renaissance rebuilt everything else.

Day 8 in Venice

East to Venice, the Grand Canal and the Frari

Two hours by train, and the arrival is the best one in Europe: the line runs out across the lagoon on a causeway, and the station steps put you directly on the Grand Canal.

Nothing today needs booking. Take the slow vaporetto rather than walking, and get off it at San Tomà: the Frari is a few minutes from the landing, and it is the one stop worth building an arrival afternoon around.

After that, get lost on the way to dinner and let the place do the work. Rialto is ten minutes east of the Frari through the alleys of San Polo, and it is worth timing for dusk.

  1. 10:00

    Train to Venice

    Travel

    About 2h05 to Venezia Santa Lucia. Santa Lucia, not Mestre, which is on the mainland.

  2. 13:30

    Vaporetto line 1 down the Grand Canal

    Travel

    The number 1 stops everywhere and takes about forty minutes end to end. It is the cheapest sightseeing in Venice and the only way to see the palace fronts the way they were meant to be seen, from the water.

  3. 14:45

    Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

    Religious

    A plain brick Franciscan barn from the outside, and inside it Titian's Assumption of the Virgin, painted for the high altar between 1516 and 1518 and framed by the arch of the choir screen so that it hits you from the door. Titian is buried in the same church. There is a Giovanni Bellini in the sacristy and a wooden Donatello in a side chapel, and no queue for any of it. Pay at the door, no booking.

  4. 17:00

    Rialto Bridge

    Architecture

    Eight centuries of bridges on this spot. The present one went up in 1591, after the wooden one collapsed under a crowd watching a wedding. Cross it early or late; at midday it is solid people.

With more time: The fish and produce market beside the bridge runs in the mornings and has been trading on the same spot for around a thousand years. It is worth setting an alarm for tomorrow.

Day 9 in Venice

Piazza San Marco, before and after the crowd

One square, most of the day, and the whole trick is timing rather than tickets. The basilica takes bookings for a small fee that is worth paying, and the first slot of the morning is a different building from the one at noon: the floodlights are on and the eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic overhead actually read as gold.

The Doge's Palace next door is the other half of the story. The basilica is what Venice believed; the palace is how it governed itself, for a thousand years, by committee and denunciation. If the Secret Itineraries tour is running, take it over the standard route.

  1. 09:30

    Saint Mark's Basilica

    Religious

    Gold above you in every direction, and a floor of buckled marble that shows how much the building has moved. Large bags have to be left round the corner, and shoulders must be covered.

  2. 11:00

    Doge's Palace

    Historic

    The seat of the republic, including the prisons across the Bridge of Sighs. The Secret Itineraries tour takes you into the administrative rooms, Casanova's cell, and the five hundred year old roof structure holding the whole thing up.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch away from the square

    Eat

    Walk five minutes in any direction first. What the piazza charges for a coffee is a local legend.

  4. 15:00

    Bell tower of St. Mark

    Architecture

    A lift to the top, no stairs, and the only place from which you can see that Venice is a fish shaped island in a lagoon rather than an endless maze.

With more time: Late afternoon is when the day boats go, and the hour to be out walking. Dorsoduro, over the Accademia bridge, is the quiet half of the island: workshops, students, and the Gallerie dell'Accademia if there is time for one more room of paintings.

Day 10 in Venice

The last morning

Get up for it. Between seven and nine the city is running itself: deliveries coming off the boats, shutters going up, and the squares that were impassable yesterday standing empty. It is the version of Venice everybody hopes for and most visitors never see, because they arrive at eleven and leave at five.

Allow far more time than seems necessary to reach the airport. Everything in Venice moves at the speed of water.

With more time: With a late flight, take the islands: Murano for the glass furnaces and Burano for the painted houses, both on the same vaporetto line and about forty minutes out across the lagoon.

Before you go

When to go

May, late September and October are the best months. Warm enough to eat outside, cool enough to stand in a queue on the Palatine with the sun on you. Italy in July and August is hot in a way that changes what is possible: Florence sits in a river basin that traps the heat, and the middle of the day becomes something to hide from rather than use.

November and February are the quietest months in Venice, with extraordinary light and a real chance of acqua alta, the tidal flooding that puts duckboards across St Mark's Square. Locals treat it as weather rather than as disaster, and so should you.

The trains

Rome to Florence is about an hour and thirty five minutes, Florence to Venice about two hours and five, both from the central station of one city to the central station of the next. Book them as soon as your dates are certain: the fare roughly triples as the train fills, and the difference between booking in March and buying at the counter is the cost of a good dinner.

In Venice, get off at Santa Lucia. Venezia Mestre is on the mainland and is a long way from anywhere you want to be.

What to book before you fly

Five things sell out: the two trains, the combined Colosseum ticket, the Uffizi, the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence for the David, and the Doge's Palace. Everything else can be decided the morning of.

Churches are free and take no bookings, but they enforce a dress code, at St Peter's and St Mark's most strictly. Covered shoulders and knees. Carry something light to put on rather than being turned away at the door in August.

The Vatican Museums, and what a spare day buys

The Sistine Chapel is at the end of a one-way route through several kilometres of galleries, it is the most oversubscribed ticket in Italy, and doing it properly costs half a day. The free afternoon in Rome is where it belongs, booked well in advance for a late slot. Skipping it on a first trip is a defensible choice.

If you can add a night anywhere, add it in Florence and spend the day in Siena: an hour and a quarter by coach, a medieval city on three ridges with a striped cathedral and a shell-shaped square, and the Tuscany people picture when they think of Italy. A second spare night belongs in Venice, for the Accademia and the Frari's own neighbourhood of workshops and back canals.

The hours people describe when they get home are almost never the ticketed ones. They are the walk back across a bridge at dusk, the church that turned out to have a Caravaggio in a side chapel, the second coffee standing at a bar with everyone else standing at the bar.

Leave room for them, and Italy will fill it.

Go deeper on one city

Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is ten days enough for Rome, Florence and Venice?
Yes, on this split. Four nights in Rome, three in Florence and two in Venice gives each city the time its size actually needs, with two short train journeys and no day spent mostly in transit. An extra night, if you have one, is best spent in Florence with a day in Siena.
Should I hire a car?
No. All three cities restrict or ban traffic in the historic centre, parking is expensive where it exists, and fines for entering a limited traffic zone arrive by post months later. The trains between the three are faster than driving anyway.
How much walking is involved?
Between five and twelve kilometres a day, most of it on cobbles or uneven ancient stone. The Rome ruins day is the hardest by a distance. Nothing here demands unusual fitness, but nothing here works in new shoes either.
What needs booking in advance?
The two train journeys, the combined Colosseum and Forum ticket, the Uffizi, the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, and the Doge's Palace. The Vatican Museums too, if you add them. Everything else can be decided on the morning.
When is the best time to go?
May, late September and October. Warm enough to eat outside and cool enough to queue in the sun. July and August are genuinely hot, Florence especially. November and February are the quietest in Venice, with the best light and a real chance of tidal flooding.
Can I change this itinerary?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: move the days around, swap a city, add the places you care about, change how long you are staying, delete what does not appeal.