How to Ship Luggage Home from Italy

The short answer

• The bag can fly with you and weighs under 23 kg: buy an extra checked bag online before you get to the airport. Nothing beats it on price.
• The bag is heavy, awkward or you're done carrying things: a door-to-door luggage service, from around €121 if you can get the bag to a pickup address yourself.
• You're in an apartment, a villa, or still travelling: have it collected where you are and shipped from there. That is what we do.
• It has to be home this week: express courier, priced on size as much as weight.
• It contains wine or spirits: stop. See the wine problem. You cannot legally post it yourself.

The four options, compared

Two things that table hides. First, the cheap options assume you can get the bag to a counter or a pickup address yourself, which is the whole difficulty if you are staying up a flight of steps in Trastevere. Second, none of the prices include duty, and duty is decided by what is inside, not by who carries it.

1. Pay the airline for an extra bag

Almost always the cheapest way to get 23 kilos across the Atlantic. On US–Italy routes an additional checked bag typically runs from roughly $85 to $150 when you buy it online in advance, and noticeably more if you buy it at check-in. American Airlines, for instance, publishes a €75 / $85 first-bag fee on transatlantic basic economy fares, rising to €160 / $200 for a third bag. European low-cost carriers are cheaper per bag and stricter per kilo.

Watch three limits. Most economy bags are capped at 23 kg, with a higher 32 kg ceiling on some fares and no single piece allowed above 32 kg. Oversize and overweight surcharges are punitive and are assessed at the desk, in front of a queue. And you still have to move the thing: through the hotel, onto the train, across the terminal.

The honest recommendation: if it fits the airline's limits and you can face carrying it, buy the extra bag. Everything below is for when that is not true.

2. Door-to-door luggage shipping

These are courier services dressed for travellers. They collect the suitcase itself, no box needed, and deliver it to a home address, with the customs paperwork prepared for you.

Send My Bag advertises shipments to the United States from €121, on a flat rate per route for items up to 30 kg. Luggage Forward sits at the premium end: it quotes $194 and up for a carry-on-sized bag up to 11 kg, $354–679 for a standard 50 lb (23 kg) checked bag on international routes, and up to $899 for oversized items to 34 kg, with most standard shipments arriving in 7–11 business days.

The gap between those two numbers is service, not distance. The cheaper end is a good courier with a good app. The expensive end is a guarantee, insurance and someone answering the phone when a bag is late.

Where they fail: pickup addresses. A service that collects from "your hotel" assumes a hotel with a reception desk that will sign for the bag on a weekday morning. Italy is full of apartments, agriturismi and villas that are neither, and a lot of travellers are three cities away by the time the driver would come.

3. Express courier

DHL and FedEx will move a box from Italy to most of the world in a few days, and this is the right answer when speed matters more than money. Two warnings.

They price on volumetric weight, meaning a large light suitcase is billed as though it were heavy. And the customs declaration is yours to get right: you are the shipper, so the value you write on the form is the value duty is calculated on. Under-declaring to save money is fraud, and customs open boxes.

Get a quote before assuming this is expensive or cheap. For one small dense box it can beat every luggage service; for a 70-litre case it rarely does.

4. Collected at your hotel, then shipped

Every option above starts with the same assumption: the bag is already at a door a van can reach, on a morning you are there to hand it over. In Italy that assumption breaks constantly. The apartment has no reception. The villa is up ninety steps. You are checking out at 10am in Florence and flying in four days, from Rome, after two more cities.

That is the gap we fill. We collect your bags anywhere in Italy, at the hotel, the villa, the Airbnb, the station, a third-floor walk-up, and take the whole journey from there: door to door, insured, paperwork prepared with you. If you are still travelling, we hold them and send them on the date you choose, so they arrive after you do. Going the other way, we ship them ahead so you land with empty hands.

From €150 per bag, door to door. The exact price depends on weight, size and destination, and you get it on WhatsApp before you commit.

Get a quote: tell us where the bags are, where they're going and how many, on the Bag It Home page or straight on WhatsApp. Minutes, not days.

What customs will actually charge you

This is the part nobody explains at the hotel desk, and it is less complicated than it sounds. Two rules hold almost everywhere: your own used belongings go home duty-free, because they are not imports, they are your things coming back; and things you bought count against a personal allowance, above which duty and tax apply. Shipping the bag instead of carrying it does not change the allowance, it only changes the form.

United States

• Returning residents normally have an $800 personal exemption per person, per trip, provided you have been out of the country at least 48 hours and have not used the exemption in the previous 30 days. Above it, duty applies.
• Belongings that travel without you are "unaccompanied articles". That is what CBP Form 3299, the Declaration for Free Entry of Unaccompanied Articles, exists for. Household effects generally need to have been used abroad for at least a year to qualify.
• Gifts posted to friends or relatives are duty-free up to $100 per recipient per day, and alcohol and tobacco are excluded from that allowance entirely.

United Kingdom

• The allowance for "other goods" is £390 per person (£270 if you arrive by private plane or boat). Go over it and you pay on the whole value, not just the excess.
• Items you owned before you left the UK come back free under returned goods relief. Your worn clothes are not an import.
• If you declare more than £1,000 of goods made in the EU, you can claim a zero customs rate with proof of origin; VAT still applies.

Canada

• After 48 hours away the personal exemption is CAD 800. Alcohol and tobacco must travel with you; everything else claimed under the exemption may follow separately.
• Goods that arrive later are declared on Form E24 / BSF192, the Personal Exemption CBSA Declaration, when you cross.

Australia

• Adults can bring in AUD 900 of general goods duty-free (AUD 450 under 18) when the goods travel with them.
• Unaccompanied baggage does not get that concession. It enters duty-free as unaccompanied personal effects only if the items are personal property you have owned and used for at least 12 months. New purchases in a shipped suitcase are dutiable.

European Union

• Italy to another EU country is a movement inside the customs union: no customs declaration, no duty on your personal belongings or your purchases. Excise goods (alcohol, tobacco) have guideline quantities for personal use, and carriers still refuse alcohol from private senders.
• Switzerland and Norway are not in the customs union: the Swiss allowance is CHF 300 per person per day, and unaccompanied goods are declared on arrival.

The practical version: a suitcase of your own worn clothes is a non-event at any border. A suitcase of new ceramics, leather and olive oil worth €2,000 is an import, whoever ships it.

The wine problem

Italy sends a lot of bottles home badly. The rule is blunt: as a private individual you cannot ship alcohol. FedEx does not accept alcohol from consumers, USPS prohibits it outright, and DHL carries it only for licensed shippers. International alcohol moves licensee to licensee, which means a licensed exporter to a licensed importer.

So there are two legal routes. Buy from a winery or shop that is set up to export and let them handle it, or carry the bottles with you inside your allowance: one litre in the US duty-free exemption for travellers 21 and over, 18 litres of still wine into Great Britain, 1.5 litres of wine into Canada, 2.25 litres of any alcohol into Australia.

Packing wine into a suitcase you then hand to a courier is not a clever workaround. It is an undeclared alcohol shipment, and it is the most common reason a bag from Italy gets held.

City by city

The logistics differ more than the rules do. Where you are decides whether a courier can actually reach you.

Rome

Termini has left-luggage but no shipping counter, and the historic centre is a ZTL where vans need a permit and a parking miracle. Apartments in Trastevere and Monti rarely have anyone to sign. If you are flying from Fiumicino in three days and want the bag gone today, collection from the apartment is the only route that does not involve you and a taxi.

Florence

The leather market is where most "the case won't close" stories start. Florence's centre is also a ZTL, the stairs are steep and the lifts are rare. Send the shopping home from the apartment and carry a daypack to Siena.

Venice

No wheels, no vans, bridges with steps. A courier "hotel pickup" in Venice means the porter service, the vaporetto and a fee at every stage. Handing the bags over at your hotel or at Piazzale Roma and letting someone else take them to the mainland is worth more here than anywhere.

Milan

The easiest city to ship from, with Malpensa and Linate close by. The catch is timing: most people leave Milan on their last day, which is exactly when there is no time to box anything. Collect the day before, fly light.

Naples and the Amalfi Coast

Positano is a staircase with a village attached. Ferries charge per bag and hydrofoils refuse big ones in rough weather. Couriers do not climb. Shipping from the coast starts with someone carrying the bag down to the road, which is the part we do.

Lake Como

Where we started. Villas up ninety steps, ferries with luggage fees, apartments with no reception, and Malpensa an hour away. We collect on the lake every day; shipping home is the same pickup with a longer journey after it.

Questions we get asked