Published on: 8 November 2014  | Last updated: 1 January 2020

There’s nothing in the Book of Rules that says you have to cycle every inch of the way. Italy has good public transport links and they provide a useful way to get to or from the starting point of your tour, visit different parts of the country, combine the mainland with one of the many islands, island-hop along the Venetian lagoon or simply avoid a dull detour.

Trains

The main train company in Italy is trenitalia (or Ferrovie Statale - FS). As for most rail networks in Europe, there’s a difference between regional and long-distance train services.

Regional trains

These normally have spaces for carrying an undis­mantled bike. On the older trains, there is a large compartment behind the driver, on newer trains bike spaces are in the middle. Look for the big white-on-blue pictogram. Bikes hang on a hook with another holder for the back wheel which may be under­neath a folding bench seat. Sometimes, although the train officially has a bike compartment you may not see one - you should still be able to put the bike in the compartment (bagaglio) where the guard has a little desk.

Every station will have a big poster for Partenze (Departures). This show a bike pictogram next to the trains which have spaces for carrying bikes. The Partenze poster is always yellow while the Arrivi (arrivals) poster is always white. If you’re in doubt about whether you can take your bike on a particular train then check the Partenze poster and look for the bike pictogram.

The ‘regional’ trains can, in fact, cover quite long distances — eg there’s a regional train service between Verona Porta Nuove and Milano (or at least there was in March 2017 when I updated this. Hopefully, I’m not tempting fate.

As well as Trenitalia there are a number of local and regional train companies. For more about local and regional train services please go to my article: Getting around: local and regional train services

Long-distance services

For long-distance journeys there are:

• the high-speed Frecciarossa and Frecciargento services. You can only take bikes on these trains in a bag - and even then luggage space is pretty restricted;
• there are also other, slower, distance trains that are being replaced by the Frecciarossa. Again you have to carry your bike in a bag and even then you might find that space is limited;
• sleeper trains. In addition to inter­na­tional services, there are sleeper trains to Puglia and Sicily. If you book a place in the compart­ments with four couchettes you should be able to put your bike under the lower bunk. However, bear in mind that there is usually very little luggage space in the couchette compart­ments. You should be OK with one bike, but if there’s more than one of you it might be worth consid­ering getting a twin-birth compartment.

Other train operators

In addition to the Trenitalia there are other train companies operating long-distance trains in Italy.

Italo are a new train operator offering high-speed train services in compet­ition with trenitalia. I’ve not travelled with Italo but their trains are built by Alstom who also build the French TGVs and the Freccierosse - and the internal layouts seem pretty similar. They don’t have bike-carriage facil­ities. According to the English version of the FAQs:

“ Prams, pushchairs and folding bicycles are classified as standard luggage. They should be folded away and placed in the relevant spaces on board.
Oversize luggage, standard bicycles and bulky items are unable to be trans­ported.

For the safety of all passengers and to protect your bicycle, we strongly recommend that it is enclosed in a protective bag or cover.. ”

Another operator is a joint venture between Trenitalia and the German and Austrian railways. It operates services between Munich, Innsbruck and a number of northern Italian cities including Bologna, Verona and Venice. All of their services now have space for at least 16 bikes, and some have dedicated carriages for bike transport. This is an option that is well worth consid­ering even for travel within Italy, at least for longer distances. It costs 10€ to book bike spaces.

For more inform­ation your best bet it to go to the Italian-language section of the Deutsche Bahn website bahn.com.ÖBB also has its own website for its services to and from Italy obb-italia.com (de/it).

Boats

All of the larger lakes in Italy have boat and ferry services. These can be an extremely useful altern­ative in avoiding busy roads or simply cut out a dull road. If you are travelling in the Italian Lakes a boat-trip you really should take at least one ride on a vaporetto. In my exper­ience, the boats and ferries are bike-friendly, although carriage may be at the discretion of the captain and subject to the avail­ab­ility of space. There’s plenty of space on car ferries but the space on boat services may be more limited. It’s important to note that you cannot take bikes on most of the boat services around Venezia (there are a couple of excep­tions - see my article on island-hopping along the Venetian lagoon: from Chioggia to Punta Sabbioni).

Ferries

to follow .…