Arriving in Rome by car

Driving in Rome and parking in Rome

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All roads lead to Rome—and certainly every highway sign in Italy, eventually, points you in this direction. The first thing you hit when driving into the Rome is the G.R.A., which stands for Grande Raccordo Annulare (but is usually just pronounced "Grah") and means "Great Ring Road"—a multi-lane (and often elevated) highway etching a rough circle around the city's outer suburbs.

The idea is that, unless your destination within the city is on the same side of town as the direction from which you're arriving, you get on this heavily trafficked bypass and zip around so you can come into town from the most useful direction for you.

Everything is pretty well signposted, but, as is usually the case in any big, congested, tangled-up city with more cars than common sense (which describes pretty much any town with a population of more than 3,000), it's difficult to navigate unless you already know what you're doing—a bit of a catch 22 for visitors.

Exits come up and then whip past often before you're prepared for them, so the best advice is to stick to the far right lane so you can grab your exit before you miss it.

Driving in Rome

Useful Italian
car rental - autonoleggio
one way - senso unico
parking - parcheggio
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Driving in Rome in an exercise in controlled insanity, and should not be attempted by anyone.

OK, so it's not that bad, but it is chaotic, frustrating, and intensely stressful. Romans, it is often said, drive like maniacs, but this isn't entirely true. Only half of them drive like maniacs. The other half are merely driving extremely aggressively and according to Italian traffic laws and norms, which you simply aren't used to.

My advice: if you do arrive by car, fight your way to your hotel garage or a public lot (detailed below), dispose of the car as quickly as possible, and spend your time in Rome blessedly car-free. (Similarly, if you are planning to rent a car for part of your Italy vacation—perhaps to visit hilltowns of Tuscany en route to Florence —arrange to pick it up on your last day in Rome and use it only to drive out of the city.)

Rome is not a city to drive in. There simply is no street parking in the historic center, and everything you want to see you can get to by foot or on public transportation (mostly by bus, a little by Metro/subway).

I will be brutally blunt: driving into Rome when you first arrive, or out of it when you are ready to leave: that's fine. But anyone who decides to drive around Rome for sightseeing purposes is an idiot.

Parking in Rome

Your hotel might have a garage or an arrangement with one (though it'll be expensive—on the order of €30 to €50 a day), or you might be lucky enough to be staying in one of the few scraps of the historic center that hasn't yet been designated a zona blu—most of the city's parking spaces have been painted with blue stripes, meaning you must pay a parking meter (often a box at the end of the block; you feed it coins—usually €1 an hour—and it gives you a slip to leave on the dashboard).

The biggest public garage is the Parcheggio Borghese (tel. +39-6-322-5934, www.sabait.it) under the Villa Borghese park in the northeast corner of town. Its entrance is on Viale del Muro Torto, which leads off into the park from the traffic circle at Porta Pinciana (the gateway through the ancient brick wall at the top of Via Veneto). This garage is open 24 hours. Rates run €2 per hour, or €18 per day.

Way cheaper—€2 for 12 hours, or €3 for 16, plus €2 to leave it overnight (so just €5 per day total)—is to park in one of the massive Parcheggio di Scambio commuter lots at suburban train stations (www.atac.roma.it; tel. +39-06-57-003), open 6am to 10pm:

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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.

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