Only France has TGV trains. In Italy, the fast trains are called Frecce.

You can buy Italian train tickets in Rome at Termini station or at travel agents. However, if your plans are firm, you can make considerable savings by buying inflexible Economy or Super Economy tickets. If you wait until you get to Rome, the cheap tickets may have sold out and you will have to pay full price.

For Italian train tickets, see www,lefrecce.it

For Zurich-Paris, you can take a TGV operated by the French railways. See www,tgv-europe.com/en but do not accept any redirection to RailEurope.

For travel from FCO airport, see the Top Question "To and from FCO airport" at top right.

You can buy international tickets at Termini station in Rome, or at any Italian travel agent, if that's what you prefer.There are usually very good discounts for advance purchase on all the railways involved, but you may be too late to get any. The best discounts require one month's advance purchase (except for the train from Venice to Milan), but there are smaller discounts available for two weeks' advance purchase.

To go to Zurich, you need to change trains in Milan. The trip takes 6 1/2 to 7 hours. You can buy the tickets for the entire itinerary on the Italian rail site. I prefer to use http://www.trenitalia.com/homepage_en.html because it doesn't require that you know the Italian name of the exact train station you want, and, for international tickets, the site mentioned by Nick usually sends you there anyway.

As Nick said, you can buy the ticket for Zurich to Paris on the www.tgv.fr web site, but you can also buy it on the Swiss site, which I find a little friendlier:

http://www.sbb.ch/en/home.html

The trip from Zurich to Paris takes about four hours.

However, if you prefer to buy the tickets when you arrive in Italy, as I said before, you can do so at the station or at a travel agent. You can even get the tickets from Venice to Zurich in a ticket machine, but you'd need to go to the window or to a travel agent for the ticket to Paris. I believe there's an international ticket window or office in Rome's Termini station; at least there used to be one.

On www.lefrecce.it you will be travelling from Roma Termini to Venezia S. Lucia and from there to Zuerich HB. For the Venezia-Zuerich journey, to get a cheap advance fare choose Smart from the Select your Fare menu, and to get even cheaper fares book Venezia to Milano Centrale and Milano to Zuerich separately.

Only buy tickets for Zurich-Paris from www.tgv-europe.com if you can purchase an e-ticket for your train, as you cannot collect tickets in Zurich. Compare prices with www.sbb.ch from which you can purchase both e-tickets and also tickets which can be collected from train stations in Switzerland.

Edit - or as Bvienci has said while I was typing this!

I suspect it's too late for Smart fares, depending on when the actual dates of travel are, because AbdFahim will arrive in Rome on the 29th, little more than a week away. It may be possible still to get economy or super economy fares on the trips from Rome to Venice, and from Venice to Milan, but it's probably also too late for those. In any case, don't buy discounted tickets unless there is really a good savings, because the discounted tickets are very inflexible.

thanks everybody. My plan of going to Venice-Zurich is on 6th Nov. But as I understand from the posts above, there is no TGV train from Italy. But I checked in http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/train-ticket where I found train schedules from Venice to Zurich (cost around 206 Euro for 2 persons).

So, I am little bit confused, shouldn't I buy from that one? or I should buy from www.lefrecce.it?

Yes, you'll find Venice to Zurich trains at www.tgv-europe.com, but no, this is not a TGV train (TGV = French high speed train, a specific type of train).

This ticket would have to be sent to you if you booked at tgv-europe.com, as they won't offer self-prinjt or collect at station for this journey. Have you enough weeks before you leave for the tickets to be sent?

TGV-europe.com is French Railways, and they will have the full price (as you have seen) but probably no cheap deals for this route. Surely better to buy a ticket starting in Italy at the Italian Railways site? www.fsitaliane.it - and after you select a train, see if there is a 'smart' fare available in the drop down 'More fares' box.

Thank you so much. This is very important information which I was not aware of. I can't afford to wait for hard copy for any train ticket because right now I am on tour and does not have any fixed postal address.

So, is it true (that TGV website does not offer self-print) for all destinations or particularly this Venice - Zurich one? As I'll buy Zurich - Paris ticket as well for 7th Dec, can I buy from TGV website and print it myself (again, I can't afford to wait for hard copy via post)??

Another thing is, I have selected the station Zurich hbf for my travel. Can you please advice whether that is the best station to select? Also for Paris, which station should I prefer (if I travel by TGV), my hotel is near Eiffel Tower.

Thanks,

As mentioned above, you can buy the Zurich - Paris ticket from the Swiss rail site, which does offer the possibility of printing your tickets.

The tgv-europe web site offers self-print tickets only for discounted travel on trains operated by the French train operator, SNCF. SNCF does not operate any part of a Venice-Zurich journey, and so cannot offer self-print tickets.

However, SNCF operates the Zurich-Paris service, so self-print tickets are available.

"hbf" is an abbreviation for the German words meaning "main railway station", so this is the correct choice for Zurich. In Paris, you have no choice: trains from Zurich arrive at Gare de Lyon.

Please understand that, although the web site is called "tgv-europe", it is run by the French railways and is not very useful for trains in other countries.