Rome, Florence and Bologna: an Italy route that leaves room for lunch

What to take away

• One big sight per day. Two is how a holiday becomes a queue.
• Rome to Florence is about 90 minutes, Florence to Bologna about 35. No car, ever.
• Vatican Museums and the Uffizi need timed tickets. Nothing else really does.
• Stay in Monti, Testaccio or Prati in Rome, not next to the Trevi Fountain.
• Finish in Bologna. It is the only one of the three where you can be bored pleasantly.

One sight a day, and why the second one always goes wrong

Rome has more famous things in it than a week can hold, which produces a specific planning failure: the two-sight day. Colosseum in the morning, Vatican in the afternoon. It fits on paper. In practice the Colosseum plus the Forum plus Palatine is four hours on your feet with no shade, and by the time you have crossed the river you are looking at Michelangelo through a headache.

We did one major thing a day, deliberately, and the rest of each day was a neighbourhood, a market and a long lunch. Four days in, the group was still speaking to each other, which is not always the case on day four of an Italy trip.

The other thing that helps: put the big thing in the morning. Almost every queue in Rome and Florence is shorter at 08:45 than it will be at any other point, and the afternoon then belongs to you rather than to a timed ticket.

• Rome day 1: Colosseum, Forum, Palatine. Nothing else.
• Rome day 2: Vatican Museums and St Peter's. Nothing else.
• Rome day 3: no monument at all.
• Florence: Uffizi one day, the Oltrarno the other.

Where to stay in Rome, and where not to

Monti is the easy answer. It is ten minutes from the Colosseum on foot, it has actual residents, and the streets are full of small places that are not competing for people who will never come back. Testaccio is the food answer, a little further out, with the best market in the city and a tram that works. Prati is the practical answer if the Vatican is your priority.

The area between the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps is where most first-time visitors book and it is the worst of the three. It is expensive, the restaurants are largely there for people who will eat one meal in Rome, and the streets at 22:00 are a slow river of people photographing water.

Whatever you choose, check the walk to a metro or tram stop. Rome is a walkable city until it suddenly is not, and the bus network requires more faith than a visitor usually has.

The two tickets that actually need booking

Vatican Museums: book online, take the earliest entry you can get, and understand that the Sistine Chapel is at the end of a very long one-way route. Allow three hours minimum. The shortcut door from the Sistine Chapel to St Peter's is officially for tour groups, and whether you get through it is a matter of luck and confidence.

Uffizi in Florence: timed entry, book ahead, and go on a weekday if you have the choice. Tuesday morning is calm. Saturday at 14:00 is not a gallery visit, it is a corridor.

The Colosseum ticket includes the Forum and Palatine and is worth booking, though it is generally available closer to the date. Accademia for the David is optional and about 40 minutes of actual content; several of our group skipped it and did not feel short-changed.

The trains are the easy part

Rome Termini to Florence Santa Maria Novella is around 90 minutes on a Frecciarossa or Italo. Florence to Bologna is about 35 minutes. All three stations are central enough to walk or take a short taxi from your hotel. Book the Rome to Florence leg ahead if four of you want to sit together; the Florence to Bologna hop can be bought the same morning.

A hire car would actively make this trip worse. All three city centres are ZTL zones with camera enforcement, the fines arrive months later, and parking near any of these old towns is either impossible or costs more than the train.

Keep the tickets somewhere everyone can reach them. The person who booked the trains is almost never the person standing nearest the departure board when the platform changes with four minutes to go, and it changed on us twice.

Florence in two nights, without the crush

Florence has the highest visitor density of the three and the smallest centre. Two nights is enough, and the trick is to cross the Arno. The Oltrarno side has the workshops, San Niccolo, Santo Spirito, and dinner that is not priced for a coach party.

Do the Uffizi in the morning, then walk up to Piazzale Michelangelo in the late afternoon. It is a twenty-five minute climb from the river and the view is the one on the postcards. Go up via the rose garden rather than the road; it is prettier and it has benches.

The Duomo itself is free to enter and the queue moves. Climbing the dome is a separate timed ticket and 463 steps in a space that is not for anyone who dislikes enclosed stairwells. Two of us did it and reported back that the bell tower opposite has a better view of the dome, which is the thing you actually came to look at.

Why Bologna is the right place to finish

Bologna has almost no obligatory sights, which after five days of obligation is the entire appeal. It has 38 kilometres of porticoes in the centre, so you can walk across town in rain without an umbrella. It has the Quadrilatero, a small grid of food streets that has been a market since the middle ages and is still mostly used by people who live there.

Climb the Asinelli tower if it is open, eat at a place with six things on the menu, and spend an afternoon doing nothing in Piazza Santo Stefano. That is the whole plan and it is enough.

It is also 35 minutes from Florence and has an airport with cheap connections, which makes it a much better final base than doubling back to Rome. If you must fly out of Rome, the train back is about two hours and ten minutes direct.

What I would leave out

Venice. It does not belong in this week. Adding it means a four-hour travel day and one crowded morning, and Venice punished more than any other Italian city by a rushed visit. Give it three nights of its own, another year.

Pisa. Easy from Florence, about an hour, and worth it only if someone in your group genuinely wants the photo. There is no shame in skipping a famous thing because nobody actually cares about it.

And the Rome food tour we booked and then cancelled. Three and a half hours, 85 euros a head, and a route through Trastevere that we walked ourselves for the price of the food. Testaccio market at 10:00 taught us more and cost about nine euros.

Questions travellers ask

Before you book

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