Do You Need a Car in Italy? Getting Around Without a Car
For many, driving in Italy is more trouble than it’s worth. Learn why and how to reach the small towns without a car.
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Some areas of Italy require a car to get around. So you decide to rent one and explore the countryside without the limitations of public transportation or the prohibitive expense of long taxi rides.
Solid choice, with one tiny problem: driving in Italy is easier said than done.
Driving in Italy is a pain in the axle
Let’s start with the paperwork. To drive in Italy as a non-resident, you may need both your home country’s driving license and an International Driving Permit (IDP), which is essentially a translation of your driving license. May, because it’s country-dependent.
It’s easy enough to get and doesn’t cost much (less than $50 in most countries). It’s also easy enough to forget at home. I kept reminding a student of mine. He got it done and promptly forgot to take it with him.
You’ll need to rent a car and ensure you don’t pick a large SUV because many charming places have narrow streets and it’s easy to get stuck. This is a common, if rookie, mistake. North American cars are huge by Italian standards. Remember, most streets were built for carts pulled by donkeys.
I hope you have lots of room on your credit card and multiple credit cards, because car rental places are notorious for ruining trips when they put a hold on your only credit card for a portion of the value of the car.
You’re likely used to automatics, so you’ll also have fewer choices and pay more for it, given that most cars in Italy are still manual. You might even book an automatic, show up, and realize they only have manual cars left on the lot.
Perhaps worst of all, you’ll need to navigate the roads with Italians who drive in a more... aggressive fashion than you’re likely used to. Some areas are worse than others. Marche? Manageable. Naples? Expect to be honked at for stopping at a red light.
Expect winding, narrow, poorly maintained rural roads. And expect potentially thousands of dollars’ worth of fines if you’re not familiar with Zone a Traffico Limitato (ZTL, the areas limited to local traffic) and you keep entering and exiting said zones in a futile attempt to find parking.
If you move there, as opposed to just visiting, you’ll need to convert your licence after a year or, if your country has no reciprocity deal, pass the Italian exams. Spoiler: many countries, including the USA and Australia, do not have one.
The theory exam is full of bureaucratic Italian that trips even native speakers. You’ll most likely want to pay an autoscuola (a driving school) to practice with an instructor and try hard to forget 30 years of bad driving habits. Expect to pay often €1,000 or more.
Plus, you’ll also need to do the dog-and-pony show that is the practical exam. A test of driving proficiency in which you obsessively and theatrically check the rear-view mirror as if the local mafia were chasing you.
So skip the car
I’m being a bit overdramatic here, but this is to say that trying to avoid driving in Italy is a sensible choice.
I always drive when visiting, but I’m obviously used to it. As a kid, I was zipping through traffic on a 1950s Vespa, years before it was legal for me to drive.
You certainly don’t need a car in major or touristy cities. In fact, you are better off not driving in cities. Anything reachable directly by train will not make you miss opting out of a rental.
The trouble starts with smaller places not directly reachable by train or by coach services like FlixBus and Itabus.
For those, a car is indeed much more convenient. But you can, with some planning and patience, make it there nevertheless. The trick is to find the nearby hub, get there by train or FlixBus/Itabus, and then take a short regional bus for the last stretch in. Master that second leg of the trip and you’ll be able to go almost anywhere.
Take the now-famous Civita di Bagnoregio. The first leg of the trip is reaching the local hub, Orvieto. You can easily get there by train as it sits on the Rome-to-Florence line.
The second leg is the Cotral (Lazio’s regional company) bus from Orvieto to Bagnoregio in less than an hour. That regional bus is fairly typical: it runs Monday to Saturday only, so Sundays are out, and you must buy tickets at the tabaccheria (tobacconist/newsstand) by the stop.
You’ll also need to tell the driver where you want to get off, as you can’t count on him calling your stop by default. It is for locals who know the area, after all.
Unlike trains, there is no single national network of regional buses. Lazio has Cotral, Tuscany has Autolinee Toscane, Umbria has Busitalia, the Amalfi Coast has SITA Sud, and so on.
To find the local bus you need, I recommend the app Moovit, which does a better job than Google Maps for Italian buses. To be sure, always confirm the times with the operator’s own website.
Some useful words to read the Italian timetables by the bus stop (or online):
Feriale: Monday to Saturday
Festivo: Sundays and holidays. When the service thins or dies.
Scolastico: School days only. Read: it doesn’t run in summer or on Sundays, and often not on Saturdays either.
Estivo: Summer schedule, often stripped to the bare bones. The one most likely to leave you stranded, especially in August.
The key rule you don’t get to break is this: any trip needs to establish what time the last bus back leaves.
Rural buses often run only a few times a day. If you miss the last bus that returns you to the hub, you end up being stuck in a village of 800 people with no set accommodations and broken Italian to explain your predicament.
Plan your day on the basis of the last bus back. You won’t see as many places as you would by car, but maybe that slower pace is part of what you seek in Italy.
Or maybe compromise
Visiting rural places without a car in Italy is possible, but it takes careful planning, use of the two-leg method, and acceptance of some inconveniences.
Some towns get two buses a day or are served only by a line that runs on school days for kids, and might not accept the general public.
Perhaps then the best approach is to compromise. For those, opt for a taxi or an NCC (noleggio con conducente, a licensed chauffeur/private-hire service) from the nearest station. It can be far cheaper than renting a car for a whole week. Or rent the car, but do so for a single day, to visit a cluster of small places that would take days to visit by bus.
Rent a car when buses truly fail you, but don’t preemptively assume that a place can’t be reached via public transportation.
Il gioco vale la candela (literally: the game is worth the candle). The reward is worth the faff, as the British would put it. The harder it is to get to a town, the fewer tourists you’ll find there.
You’ll have earned the place for yourself.