Buses in Italy

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Getting around Italy by inter-city coach or bus

When you’re getting down to the kind of small-town travel this site describes, you’ll probably need to use regional buses at some point. Regional intertown buses are called pullman, though autobus, the term for a city bus, is also sometimes used.

All things being equal (and with a few notable excepetions, like the Amalfi Coast or some Tuscan hilltowns), to connect any two reasonably-sized towns or cities in Italy, the trains will be faster, more frequent, and more convenient than the buses, and will cost about the same, on average (which is to say: sometimes less, sometimes more).

Useful Italian for bus travel
ticket - biglietto
one-way - solo andata
round-trip - andata-ritorno
intercity coach - pullman
city bus - autobus, bus
bus stop - fermata
excuse me (in a crowd) - permesso
I'm getting off! - scendo!

In other words: unless you're trying to get to a tiny town off the beaten path (and off the rail lines), it makes far more sesne to take the train.

When you do take a bus in Italy...

You can get just about anywhere through a network of dozens of local, provincial, and regional lines.

Every province in Italy has its own bus system; there are a few regional ones as well. (An Italian regione, or "region," is like a U.S. state—Tuscany, Sicily, Lombardy—while a provincia, or "province," is more like a U.S. county, and usually describes the smaller towns and territory surrounding a major city or town—for example, Tuscany includes the provinces of Florence, Siena, Pisa, etc.)

The only Italian coach company with national scope is SITA (www.sitabus.it), which runs regional lines in the Veneto (home to Venice, Verona, Padova), Tuscany (Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena), Campania (Naples, Amalfi Coast), Basilicata (Matera), and Apulia (Bari, Brindisi, Lecce).

Some tips:

Bus schedules aren’t always easy to come by or to figure out—the local tourist office usually has a photocopy of the schedule, and in cities some companies have offices. Some tips
Buses exist mainly to shuttle workers and schoolchildren, so the most runs are on weekdays, early in the morning and usually again around lunchtime. All too often, though, the only run of the day will be at 6am.
A town’s bus stop is usually either on the main piazza, by the train station, or (especially in smaller towns) a large square on the edge of town or at the bend in the road just outside the main city gate.
You should always try to find the local ticket vendor—if there’s no office, it’s invariably the nearest newsstand or tabacchi (signaled by a sign with a white T), or occasionally a bar—but you can usually also buy tickets on the bus.
You can also flag a bus down as it passes on a country road, but try to find an official stop (a small sign tacked onto a telephone pole).
Tell the driver where you’re going and ask him courteously if he’ll let you know when you need to get off. When he says “E la prossima fermata,” that means yours is the next stop. “Posso scendere?” (poh-so shen-dair-ay?) is “May I please get off?”

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Buses in Italy

When you do take a bus in Italy...

Some tips:

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