Drive time
10 stops that turn the Rome to Florence drive into three days
Comuni where the drive to Rome plus the drive to Florence stays under five and a half hours combined, so the detour off the A1 costs little. 10 stops shown, ordered from the Rome end to the Florence end.
Table no. 10 · Ranked by min · 10 towns
Driven direct, Rome to Florence takes about three hours and teaches you nothing. Stretched over three days, the same route crosses the Tiber valley, southern Umbria and the Val di Chiana, some of the oldest continuously inhabited country in Italy.
These stops keep the combined drive to both cities under five and a half hours, so the detours cost little. Ordered from the Rome end to the Florence end; pick three, sleep in two.
- 1.Cerveteri55 min from Rome, 234 min to FlorenceRoma · LazioAn Etruscan capital seven kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian coast, with the Banditaccia necropolis holding 1,000 tombs in the largest ancient cemetery in the Mediterranean.
- 2.Castelnuovo di Porto72 min from Rome, 237 min to FlorenceRoma · LazioA tufa-ridge borgo twenty-five kilometers north of Rome inside the Parco di Veio, dominated by a Renaissance fortress above the Tiber valley.
- 3.Tarquinia82 min from Rome, 202 min to FlorenceViterbo · LazioAn Etruscan capital on a Maremma ridge whose 6,000 rock-cut tombs at Monterozzi hold the largest body of pre-Roman painting in the Mediterranean.
- 4.Sutri87 min from Rome, 237 min to FlorenceViterbo · LazioAn Etruscan and Roman town on a tuff spur, with a rock-cut amphitheater carved straight from the volcanic stone of the Cimini.
- 5.Magliano Sabina97 min from Rome, 211 min to FlorenceRieti · LazioA 222-meter Sabine town on a Tiber terrace, cathedral seat of the Sabina diocese on the Lazio-Umbria border.
- 6.Casperia99 min from Rome, 231 min to FlorenceRieti · LazioA Sabina hill village named Aspra in Virgil's Aeneid, called that until 1947, ringed by walls from 1282.
- 7.Narni105 min from Rome, 209 min to FlorenceTerni · UmbriaNarni is a hilltop town on a travertine outcrop above the Nera valley whose Latin name, Narnia, gave C.S. Lewis a word for a fictional kingdom he never set foot in.
- 8.Bassano in Teverina106 min from Rome, 210 min to FlorenceViterbo · LazioA tufa-spur borgo of 1,260 above the Tiber valley between Lazio and Umbria, with a clock tower that hides an eleventh-century animated bell tower.
- 9.
Capalbio113 min from Rome, 171 min to FlorenceGrosseto · TuscanyA walled hilltop borgo at 217 meters in the southern Maremma, donated to the Abbey of Tre Fontane by Charlemagne. - 10.Bomarzo114 min from Rome, 204 min to FlorenceViterbo · LazioThe Tuscia village below a garden built by a grieving condottiero for his dead wife, all stone monsters and no apology for it.
EIGHT OF THE TOP TEN ARE IN LAZIO
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