My daughter is doing her first international traveling by herself. She’s got a two hour layover at the airport in Rome. What’s the airport like there? Will she be able to find her way around easily? Are the transfers fairly easy? She’s flying Alitalia into and out of Rome. Thanks.
Never been there, but remember that airports have a large number of people travelling through them each day, many of whom had never been there before. Any major airport has excellent signage to show you where you want to go.
In addition, English is widely spoken in Italy. If she goes to any information desk at the airport, she can expect to find at least one person who will be fluent in English.
Only been through Leonardo Da Vinci a couple of times. Don’t remember any problems - an airport like all the others. I can’t actually remember but I would be amazed if the signs were not in English as well as Italian.
If she’s worried why not get familiar with the layout before she goes. Check out the airport web pages and particularly the maps here. The normal massive range of shops and restaurants!
Airport workers do, yes, but when you get outside fluency can be spotty. Knowing some Italian is definitely helpful.
This matches my recollection. How old is your daughter?
I haven’t flown out of Fiumichino, but I have flown in, and I don’t recall it being anything out of the ordinary when compared to other international airports. About all I do recall is that it was a little bit grungier than say… IAH or Heathrow.
Pretty standard airport fare. Signs are all in English, staff all spoke English. Announcements made in Italian and English.
Almost 18
Two hours- enough time to buy a coffee, read a magazine and do a little shopping. She’ll be fine- it isn’t that big.
She’ll have no problems at all. But I do agree, that once she leaves the airport English-usage becomes more spotty. So make sure that she knows where she is going before she leaves the airport. We have found bus drivers, cab drivers (as long as they recognize the destination name), train and transportation personnel to be sufficiently proficient to be helpful.
The one warning I will give you and your daughter. There is no such thing as a line in Italy. You need to literally push and yell your way forward at times- not because of safety but because if you aren’t aggressive you won’t actually move forward. Getting on trains, planes, through security, buying something at a newsstand- if you don’t push forward, you get squeezed backwards by 80 year old women pushing from the sides. I’m not kidding- I’ve gotten cut off buying tickets by little old ladies popping their heads between my arms as I am reaching forward and carrying a baby on my back.
For entertainments sake, watch the Germans, English, northern Europeans, shake their heads in disgust at the disorganization and then cut in front of them!
Where is she going on her trip? Just Rome?
She’s only got a two hour layover in Rome. She’s not leaving the airport. I can see who read the OP and who didn’t. 
She’s actually flying from Tel Aviv to Rome, changing planes, then flying to Newark. This is her “gap summer” trip.
To be fair, I don’t think we can really be blamed for inferring that, if she has a layover in Rome, it may very well be because she’s then flying to somewhere else in Italy. Now I see that it’s not the case, but you didn’t mention in the OP that she was on her way to the US.
It’s Ben Gurion airport I’d be more concerned about - it can be extremely unpredictable for a traveller security-wise. They do often regard 17-year-olds travelling on their own as suspicious (although I imagine that’s more true for males than females). I don’t know what her background is - if she’s, say, Jewish with an Israeli passport, she probably wouldn’t have any trouble at all. If she’s Arabic she’d need to factor in the possibility of a long period of questioning in the airport. For other backgrounds it can go either way.
The airport in Rome should be pretty straightforward. I haven’t been through Fiumincino recently but I flew out of Bergamo last week and it was very clean, modern and easy to navigate. Signs and announcements were in English as well as Italian and in an international airport like Fiumincino there’s guaranteed to be staff at the help desks who speak good English.
She’s Jewish, has Israeli and U.S. passports, and speaks fluent Hebrew. She didn’t have any problems getting thru security this morning, except the line was very long.
Fiumicino is kind of a POS, for an international airport. Ok, it is not that bad, but it is glaringly more gritty and ugly than those at the top, like Changi or HKG. In terms of getting around, though, it should be fine. It does not have a particularly complicated layout, and language is not going to be an issue.
Well. she’s come and gone. I assume she made her transfer OK, and her Alitalia flight is now somewhere over Europe on its way to Newark. She doesn’t have to worry about the airport in Rome again until her return trip in 5 weeks.