Day trips from Rome: 15 trips compared by price, length and reviews

Day trips from Rome to Pompeii: four listings

The $77 day (9 to 12 hours, 5,958 reviews at 4.6) is the cheapest trip on the page and sells lunch and Mount Vesuvius as add-ons, with a crater hike or a geologist-led walk to choose between. The $179 tour goes by high-speed train to Naples and on by road to ruins preserved by volcanic ash, with a light lunch and a wine tasting, 9 hours, 4.9 across 801. The $229 trip adds Herculaneum and an archaeologist, by fast train and shared minibus, 11 hours, 4.8 across 495. The $222 day pairs Pompeii with the Amalfi Coast in 13 hours with roundtrip private transportation, 4.7 across 921.

Day trips from Rome to Amalfi Coast and Capri

Four listings reach the coast. The $80 day visits a limoncello stop with time on your own in Positano and Sorrento, 11 to 12 hours, 1,954 reviews at 4.5. The $279 small-group day goes by train and boat, 11 hours, 4.8 across 312. The $291 trip takes the high-speed train and then the ferry to Amalfi and Positano, a full day, 4.7 across 266. Capri is its own listing: $244 for a guided day with a ferry from Naples and the Blue Grotto, rated 4.3 across 262, the lowest rating on this page. No beach stop is named on any of the coastal listings; they are towns and views.

Day trips from Rome to Venice by high-speed train

One listing: $272 by high-speed train, a full day, with the canals by waterbus, time on your own and an aperitif with the group leader at the end, 4.7 across 511 reviews. It is the one listing here that ends with a drink built in.

Day trips from Rome to Tuscany, Florence and Pisa

Two listings. The $120 day goes to Montepulciano and Montalcino with top wines, a gourmet lunch with sommeliers and a 13th-century wine cellar, 12 hours, 4.6 across 257. The $321 small-group day covers Pisa — the Baptistery, the cathedral and the leaning tower — and Florence with Michelangelo’s David, 12 hours, 4.7 across 118. One is wine, the other is two cities; neither is a short day.

Tivoli, Umbria and the Castelli Romani: easy and unusual

Tivoli is the short day: 5 hours for Hadrian’s Villa and the Renaissance Villa d’Este with its fountains, $299, 4.7 across 82. Umbria has two: Assisi and Orvieto’s Gothic cathedral in a full day for $321 (4.8 across 92), and a private day to Assisi and the sanctuary of Santa Rita in Cascia for $661 (5.0 across 35 reviews). The Castelli Romani hop-on hop-off bus at $173 runs 10.5 hours through Grottaferrata, Marino and Castel Gandolfo with live commentary at your own pace, 4.9 across 33 reviews — the least reviewed trip here and the one unusual format among guided days.

Five of the fifteen name a train. Pompeii by high-speed train with lunch and wine, $179, 9 hours, 4.9 across 801 reviews. Pompeii and Herculaneum by fast train and shared minibus, $229, 11 hours, 4.8 across 495. Venice by high-speed train, $272, a full day, 4.7 across 511. The Amalfi Coast by train and boat, $279, 11 hours, 4.8 across 312; and Positano and Amalfi by high-speed train and ferry, $291, a full day, 4.7 across 266.

The best day trips from Rome by train, on the reviews, are the two Pompeii ones: 4.9 and 4.8 on 801 and 495 reviews. They are also the only train days under $230. Rail costs more here — the $77 Pompeii day and the $80 Amalfi day do not mention a train — but the train listings are the ones with an archaeologist, or a lunch and a wine tasting, written into the description.

Without a car, the train days and the rest are booked the same way: each is sold from Rome with the transport part of the listing. A quick way to narrow the fifteen is budget: under $100 means the two cheapest days; the train days start at $179.

Take Pompeii, where the numbers are thickest. The $77 day carries 5,958 reviews at 4.6; the $179 train day carries 801 at 4.9. The extra $102 buys a high-speed train, a light lunch, a wine tasting and three tenths of a rating point. If the day matters more than the budget, the train version is the better-rated product by a clear margin; if $77 is the point, nearly six thousand people have rated it 4.6.

The Amalfi Coast is the opposite case. The $80 day is rated 4.5 across 1,954 reviews; the $279 and $291 train-and-boat days are 4.8 and 4.7 on 312 and 266. The price more than triples and the rating moves by two or three tenths. Pay for the train and the boat if you want them, not for a markedly better score.

Across the fifteen, the great majority of reviews — 8,175 of 12,097 — sit on the four Pompeii listings, so that is the proven product. The one 5.0, the private Assisi day, stands on 35 reviews and the Castelli Romani bus on 33: promising numbers, thin evidence. Capri at 4.3 across 262 is the one trip whose rating lags, and the listing to read most carefully before paying $244.