📦 What's Included in This Package
- ✈️ Round-trip economy class airfare to Rome (FCO), departing from Florence (FLR)
- 🚗 Manual car rental for 6 nights (automatic upgrade available)
- 🏨 2 nights near Rome at Villa Mercede, or similar
- 🏡 4 nights in Tuscany in a 2-bedroom/1-bathroom apartment at Fattoria degli Usignoli or Villa il Palagio
Upgrade options available: Add daily breakfast, a Florence Walking Tour, and additional guided experiences.
Car rental note: Drop-off surcharges apply when returning to a different city (Florence vs. Rome). Fees vary by vehicle category and are paid on-site at rental.
Day 1: Welcome to Italy — Arrival and the Frascati Hills
Fly into Rome Fiumicino (FCO). Pick up your rental car. Drive southeast (approximately 25 minutes) into the Castelli Romani hills.
Your first afternoon in Italy belongs to the Frascati area: a volcanic hill town in the Colli Albani that Romans have been escaping to since the days of the Republic. Its busy city center has a rich history and culture, today attracting a cosmopolitan mix of locals, expats, and the occasional celebrity drawn by the area's combination of Renaissance villas and excellent local white wine. Frascati DOC (the crisp, mineral-driven white wine produced from the volcanic tufo soil of the Castelli Romani) is ideally consumed at a local enoteca within hours of landing, as a jet-lag remedy that has no pharmaceutical equivalent.
Settle into your accommodation, orient yourself with the car and the road logic of the Italian hills, and eat dinner locally. The immediate vicinity is the correct instinct for Day 1; save the major sites for when the jet lag has cleared. A simple dinner of cacio e pepe and a carafe of house white at a trattoria in the Frascati centro storico costs $16 to $22 per person and sets the correct tone for the week.
Day 2 - Roma: Colosseum, Forum & the Trevi Fountain
Drive into Rome - approximately 30 minutes from your accommodation. Full day in the city. Return to the hills for dinner.
Rome is not a city that organizes itself into logical geographic circuits. The correct approach is to pick an anchor and walk outward from it. For a single day in Rome, the anchor is the Colosseum.
Start at the Colosseum (book tickets in advance at coopculture.it — skip-the-line combined tickets run €20–24). Built between 72 and 80 AD, the largest amphitheater ever constructed, capable of holding 50,000 spectators for gladiatorial combat and public spectacles. Stand in the arena floor if your ticket includes it; the scale from that vantage point is the photograph that no exterior shot replicates.
Walk directly into the Roman Forum — the heart of the ancient city, where the Arch of Titus, the Temple of Saturn, and the Via Sacra (the road on which triumphant generals paraded after military victories) are contained in a single open-air archaeological site included in the Colosseum ticket. Allocate 1.5 hours minimum.
Walk north 15 minutes to the Pantheon (free entry, though timed-entry booking recommended in peak season) — the perfectly preserved Roman temple of 125 AD, whose unreinforced concrete dome remained the world's largest for 1,300 years after its construction. The oculus at the center of the dome, 9 meters wide and open to the sky, lets in rain, which drains through the slightly convex floor. Stand beneath it for 10 minutes and let the engineering make itself understood.
End the afternoon at the Trevi Fountain — toss a coin over your left shoulder with your right hand for the guarantee of a return to Rome, as the tradition prescribes — before driving back through the Castelli Romani. Stop at the Frascati Cathedral and the Abbazia di San Nilo a Grottaferrata (a 10th-century Greek Orthodox monastery still functioning with resident monks, 5 minutes south of Frascati) on the return.
Day 3: The Drive North - Rome to the Tuscan Countryside
Check out of your Roman accommodation. Drive north approximately 2.5 to 3 hours to your Tuscan apartment. Afternoon arrival.
The drive from the Roman hills to Tuscany is the trip's transition moment. The landscape changes progressively as you move north on the A1 Autostrada: the volcanic tufo of the Castelli Romani gives way to the Lazio wheat fields, then climbs into the first Apennine foothills before descending into the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan countryside that announces itself with cypress alleys and terracotta farmhouses visible from the motorway.
Your apartment at Fattoria degli Usignoli or Villa il Palagio (a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom property set in the Tuscan hills within easy reach of Florence, Siena, San Gimignano, Certaldo, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo) is the base from which the rest of the week operates. Arrive by mid-afternoon, unload the car, walk the property, and orient yourself to the surrounding landscape. The vineyards visible from your windows are likely producing Chianti Classico DOCG.
The correct first evening in Tuscany is a simple one: buy groceries from the nearest village alimentari (bread, local pecorino, prosciutto, a bottle of the estate wine if available), eat on the terrace, and watch the Tuscan hills go golden in the evening light. Some evenings don't require a restaurant.
Day 4: Florence - The Duomo, Uffizi and the Renaissance in One Day
Day trip from your Tuscan apartment (approximately 30 to 45 minutes by car). Full day in the city. Return to the countryside for dinner.
Florence is the city that invented the Renaissance and has been living inside it ever since. One full day covers the essential circuit; the key is sequencing it correctly to minimize queuing and maximize time with the art.
Start at the Duomo at 9am (book the Brunelleschi Dome climb in advance at duomo.firenze.it; $22 per person, timed entry required). The Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral took nearly 150 years to complete and its octagonal red-tile dome (engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi without scaffolding using a double-shell construction never previously attempted) is visible from everywhere in the city and best understood from the inside, climbing between the two shells on the 463-step ascent to the lantern. The view from the top covers the entire Florentine basin.
Walk 5 minutes south to the Uffizi Gallery (book at uffizi.it; $22 to $27 per person; pre-booking is essential). Botticelli's Birth of Venus and La Primavera, Leonardo's Annunciation, Michelangelo's Holy Family, and 82 further rooms of Italian painting from Cimabue to Caravaggio. Allow 2.5 to 3 hours minimum.
Lunch on the Ponte Vecchio bridge (the 14th-century bridge of goldsmiths, the only Florentine bridge the retreating German army did not destroy in 1944) or in the Oltrarno neighborhood on the river's south bank, where local trattorias still serve ribollita and bistecca fiorentina at lunch prices.
Spend the late afternoon at the Basilica di Santa Croce (the Franciscan church containing the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and a cenotaph for Dante all in a single nave) and, if the gallery queue has moved, the Galleria dell'Accademia for the Statue of David ($17 per person; book in advance at accademia.org).
Return to Tuscany for dinner at a Chianti Classico zone village restaurant: ribollita, pappardelle with wild boar ragu, florentine steak, and the local Sangiovese.
Day 5: Tuscany at Leisure - Vineyards, Villages and the Chianti Road
No agenda. Stay local.
Day 5 is the day the itinerary releases you from obligation. Your apartment is surrounded by the Chianti Classico wine zone: the 72,000 hectares of hills between Florence and Siena that produce one of Italy's most celebrated reds from Sangiovese grapes grown in iron-rich galestro soil. The Chiantigiana road (SR222) connects the zone's wine estates through a series of cypress-lined curves that have no functional driving purpose beyond being beautiful.
Options for the day, in no particular order:
Drive the Chiantigiana south and stop at a winery for a tasting. Badia a Coltibuono, Castello di Brolio (the Barone Ricasoli estate where Chianti Classico was invented in 1872), and dozens of other estates post signs reading degustazione aperta. Cost: $11 to $22 per person for a tasting flight.
Drive 30 minutes south to San Gimignano — the medieval hilltop village of 14 surviving towers surrounded by Vernaccia white wine vineyards, with an award-winning gelato at Gelateria Dondoli on the main square.
Spend the afternoon on the apartment terrace with a novel and the hill view.
All three are correct.
Day 6: Pisa or Arezzo - Choose Your Last Full Day
Day trip from your Tuscan apartment. Pisa is 2 hours west. Arezzo is 1 hour south.
Option A — Pisa: The Leaning Tower of Pisa is on every list of things you feel you shouldn't need to see and then discover you genuinely needed to see. The lean (caused by soft ground during construction in 1173 and now stabilized at 3.97 degrees) is more pronounced in person than in photographs. Climb it ($22 per person; book at opapisa.it) for the off-kilter perspective from the top. The surrounding Piazza dei Miracoli contains the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Camposanto monumental cemetery in a single grass square of extraordinary architectural density. Allow 3 hours.
Option B — Arezzo: One hour south, Arezzo is the Tuscan city that travelers who got slightly lost ended up finding and subsequently recommending. The Piazza Grande (the sloping central square with its Vasari loggia, Romanesque church, and medieval towers framing the skyline) hosts a famous antiques market on the first Sunday of every month. The Basilica di San Francesco contains Piero della Francesca's fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross (1452 to 1466): one of the finest fresco cycles in Italy and significantly less visited than Florence's equivalents. Book entry in advance at pierodellafrancesca.it ($11 per person).
Return to the Tuscan apartment for a final dinner — a proper Tuscan meal with the remaining wine and whatever the nearby village market provided. Pack for the Florence airport departure.
Day 7: Depart Florence - Arrivederci, Italia
Drive to Florence Amerigo Vespucci Airport (FLR). Return rental car. Fly home.
Florence's airport is compact and efficiently managed. Allow 90 minutes before departure for car return, check-in, and security. If the flight is in the afternoon, a final cappuccino at a Florentine café bar (stand at the counter: $1.30 to $1.60, the correct Italian way) before the car return is the right final act.
💰 Quick Budget Reference (All Prices in USD)
ItemCost Per PersonColosseum + Roman Forum + Palatine Hill$22 to $26Brunelleschi Dome climb, Florence$22Uffizi Gallery, Florence$22 to $27Statue of David, Accademia$17Leaning Tower of Pisa$22Piero della Francesca frescoes, Arezzo$11Chianti winery tasting$11 to $22Dinner at a Tuscan trattoria$22 to $38Autostrada tolls (approximate, full route)$29 to $41 total
All USD conversions at approximately $1.08 per euro.
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LetsJourney.info is an independent comparison site. Commission may be earned through links at no cost to you. Package prices are per person based on 2 travelers from JFK; airfare, taxes, and car rental included as stated. Drop-off surcharges for car return to a different city are paid on-site. Museum admission prices are approximate; always pre-book timed-entry tickets at official websites. Driving in Italy requires a valid US driver's license; an International Driving Permit (IDP) is recommended and available inexpensively through AAA.
