Day trips from Rome by car: the hills, the lakes and the wine towns

First, the honest advice

Not every day trip from Rome needs a car, and a few are worse with one.

Take the train to Florence, Naples and Orvieto. They are fast, the stations are central, and parking at the other end is a problem you have paid to acquire.

Take the train to Ostia Antica too — the ancient port is a suburban ride from the centre and the site is enormous, flat and walkable.

Drive when the destination is not one place but several, spread out, with roads between them worth driving. That is the case in exactly one direction from Rome, and it starts ten minutes from the Colosseum.

The Alban Hills, and why they are the right answer

Southeast of Rome the ground rises into an extinct volcano. Its collapsed craters hold two lakes; on the rims sit a dozen small towns; on the slopes are the vineyards that make Frascati.

Romans call the area the Castelli Romani and have been escaping here every summer since the Renaissance, and every Sunday since forever. Foreign visitors mostly never hear of it, which is the entire opportunity.

It is forty minutes away. Nothing else this good is this close.

The Appian Way is how you get there: the oldest road in Europe, still paved in Roman basalt, lined with pines and tombs. It is a destination that happens to also be a route.

Frascati is the wine town — villas, terraces over the plain, and the fraschette where you eat porchetta with your hands and drink white wine by the litre.

Castel Gandolfo and Lake Albano give you the papal palace on a crater rim and a volcanic lake below it that you can swim in.

Lake Nemi is the smaller, stranger crater: wild strawberries, a sacred grove, and the wreck of Caligula's floating palaces.

Tusculum closes the circuit — a Roman theatre on the ridge, and the best view over Rome there is.

All of that fits in one day, and the driving between the stops is fifteen minutes at a time.

The other classics, briefly

Tivoli — Hadrian's Villa and the fountains of Villa d'Este, an hour east. Two large sites in one day is a lot of walking; go for one, properly.

Lake Bracciano — a bigger lake, a castle, and lakeside towns, an hour north. Quieter and less interesting than the volcanic hills, but pleasant.

Viterbo and the Etruscan country — medieval streets, hot springs, tombs. Ninety minutes, and a full day once you arrive.

Sperlonga and the coast — a white hilltop village over a beach, ninety minutes south. Worth it in summer, and only in summer.

Practicalities nobody mentions

Do not drive in central Rome. The historic centre is a limited traffic zone with automatic cameras, and the fines arrive at your home address months later, with the rental company's fee on top. Here is how the ZTL works. Pick your vehicle up outside the zone and drive outwards.

Carry an International Driving Permit if your licence was issued outside the EU. It is required by law, it must be obtained before you travel, and without it your insurance can be contested after an accident. The details are here.

Leave late morning and come back after dark. Roman traffic is a rush-hour phenomenon; between ten and four the roads out are clear, and the drive back down the hills at night is empty.

Sunday is different. Italians go out on Sundays: the hill towns fill up, the restaurants are full of families, and the Appian Way closes to traffic altogether. Wonderful for atmosphere, difficult for driving.

Lunch is the main event. Not an interruption of the day — the point of it. Plan around one o'clock and do not schedule anything for the following hour.

What we do

We rent electric classic cars in Rome and hand you a roadbook of these hills: the route, the stops, where to park, which family winery pours by the glass and what time the light on the ridge turns gold.

No convoy, no guide in the back seat, no schedule. You drive; the day is yours.

Our self-drive tours