Night train route
Intercity Notte Rome–Palermo
Rome → Palermo · Italy
- Distance
- 920 km
- Fastest time
- 12 h 30 min
- Top speed
- 160 km/h
- Operator
- Trenitalia
- Train
- Intercity Notte sleeper
- Countries
- Italy
- In service since
- 1899
- Runs
- daily
Europe’s last train on a ship: the sleeper is split at Villa San Giovanni and floated across the Strait of Messina before breakfast.
Sleepers have crossed to Sicily since 1899, and this is the last place in Europe where a passenger train still boards a ship. The Intercity Notte leaves Rome after dinner, runs the Tyrrhenian coast through the night, and at dawn is split into sections and shunted onto the ferry at Villa San Giovanni. Passengers can climb to the deck for the crossing of the Strait of Messina, then roll back down to their bunks for the run along Sicily’s north coast to Palermo.
Along the way
- Tyrrhenian coast by night
- Ferry loading at Villa San Giovanni
- On-deck Strait of Messina crossing
- Sicilian north coast
- Cefalù rock & cathedral
- Arrival beneath Monte Pellegrino
More night train routes
- Nightjet Paris → Vienna
- EuroNight Stockholm → Hamburg
- Santa Claus Express Helsinki → Rovaniemi
- Venice Simplon-Orient-Express Paris → Venice
All sleepers serving these cities: night trains from Rome · all 98 night trains.
More train routes in Italy.