Rome Day Trips

This town boasts two of Italy’s most remarkable treasures, a mere hour-long train ride away from Rome. The Villa D’Este is a beautiful Renaissance mansion with a garden of over a thousand fountains in all shapes and sizes, while Hadrian’s Villa shows off the opulence of imperial Rome, even in ruins.

If you don’t have time to visit Pompeii, why not visit the next best thing? The glorious ruins at Ostia Antica, just outside of Rome, are easily accessible by a local commuter train that costs 1 Euro.

One of the most beautiful hill towns in Italy, Orvieto features a delicious local white wine and an impossibly ornate cathedral that has Luca Signorelli’s Last Judgment fresco cycle inside (Michelangelo ripped it off for the Sistine Chapel).

A pleasant beach town with a beautiful shoreline (one of Italy’s best beaches), grottos to explore, and a The Tiberius Cave and Archeological Museum. The old town is fun for walking around.

The hardy traveler can easily get down here and back in a day, though total travel time each way is about 3.5 hours. But the fantastic ruined city of Pompeii, unearthed from the volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius is worth it. No other archeological site gives you as much of a feel of what it must have been like to live in the Roman empire. A world heritage site.

If you take one of the new fast trains, Florence is an easy, under-two-hour train ride from Rome. But with so much to see in this Renaissance gem – from Michelangelo’s David to the Uffizi gallery – you may not want to leave!