Rome's coach tour industry sells day trips to places reachable on an ordinary suburban train for a few euros. Four of them are genuinely excellent and none needs a tour.
Ostia Antica
40 minutes, ordinary Metro ticket, from Piramide
Rome's port city, abandoned as the river silted and left largely intact. Streets, apartment blocks several storeys high, baths with mosaic floors, a theatre still used for performances, public latrines, and the bar counters of ancient takeaways.
It is extensively preserved and it receives a small fraction of Pompeii's visitors, without the trip to Naples.
Allow three hours. Take water — there is limited shade.
Tivoli
~1 hour by train or Cotral bus
Two sites, a few kilometres apart, which makes a full day.
Hadrian's Villa — an imperial estate of extraordinary scale on the plain below the town, built by an emperor who had seen the empire and reproduced parts of it here. Largely ruined and genuinely enormous.
Villa d'Este — a Renaissance garden of hundreds of fountains, all gravity-fed, terraced down a steep hillside. The Hundred Fountains avenue and the Oval Fountain are the set pieces.
A local bus connects the two; check its timetable before setting off, as it is infrequent.
Orvieto
~1h15 by train, then funicular
A town on a volcanic plateau rising sheer out of the plain, reached by funicular from the station.
The cathedral has a striped facade covered in mosaic and one of the great fresco cycles inside. Beneath the town is a network of Etruscan tunnels, wells and cellars, visitable on a short guided tour — one of the few places on this list where guiding is required.
The Pozzo di San Patrizio, a well with a double-helix staircase so mules could descend and ascend without meeting, is the other set piece.
The Castelli Romani
30–45 minutes by regional train
Hill towns in the volcanic hills southeast of Rome, where Romans go at weekends.
Frascati for white wine and porchetta in the fraschette. Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence, above Lake Albano. Nemi, tiny, above its own crater lake, known for wild strawberries.
Almost no international visitors, and it is the most relaxed of these four.
The others worth knowing
| Destination | Time | What |
|---|---|---|
| Cerveteri | 1h | Etruscan tomb necropolis |
| Viterbo | 1h30 | Medieval walled town, papal palace |
| Sperlonga | 1h30 | Best beach near Rome |
| Naples / Pompeii | 1h10 fast train | Long day, worth an overnight instead |
| Florence | 1h30 fast train | Possible, better as a stay |
Practical
Regional and suburban tickets must be validated in the green platform machines before boarding. An unvalidated ticket is a fine of around €50 and it is the most common avoidable cost in Italy.
Go early. All of these are quieter and cooler in the morning, and the archaeological sites have little shade.
Check Monday closures. Several Italian sites close on Mondays, including some at Tivoli.
Pompeii as a day trip from Rome is possible on the fast train but makes a twelve-hour day. Staying a night in Naples is a better trip and costs less than the tour version.