It usually seems quite easy to find cheap plane tickets into London, Paris, and Amsterdam, but for some reason airfare to Rome can be very pricey. This is largely due to the fact that Rome is actually not a common transfer point for travelers going from one region to the other. The three cities mentioned above are each home to huge airlines that fly all over the world, but Rome is home to Alitalia and they are relatively small compared to the others.

One tip that often helps out if you are coming from North America is to book a ticket into London or Paris and then find a separate ticket on a discount airline into Rome. Often the cost of these two individual flights together is much less than the price for a flight directly into Rome.

The other frustrating thing is there are no other large cities near Rome, so you can’t really fly into a cheap airport and then take the train the rest of the way. Vienna isn’t terribly far from Rome, but it’s a smaller airport and flights there are usually even more expensive than into Rome itself. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet on Rome airfare and try to save money in other places on your trip.