Italy — where to go and when
4 destinations covered
Four Italies are published here, and they have less in common than their shared passport suggests. Rome is an imperial capital where every layer was built on top of the last and nothing was ever fully cleared away. Florence is a small Renaissance city whose art is concentrated into a few streets, which is why it feels crowded when Rome does not. Venice is a set of islands without roads, extraordinary and economically distorted by that fact. Sicily is a separate world with Greek temples, Arab-Norman churches and an active volcano, and it is the one place here that most rewards a hire car. Prices land a few points below the French benchmark we index against, close enough that the real budget question is which city you sleep in and how far from the monuments. Italy pays back slow travel: one region, one base, and meals treated as an event rather than a refuelling stop.
When to go
June, September and October are the months our national figures endorse outright, and the reason July and August are missing is that summer inland is severe: Florence hits 34.4 °C at its peak and Rome 33.8 °C, temperatures that make afternoon sightseeing a poor idea. The islands and the coast behave better, Sicily topping out at 30.9 °C with a comfortable spread across May, June, September and October. Rain is concentrated in autumn, and Florence is the wettest of the four with 126 rainy days a year against Sicily's 80.
The places we cover, side by side
| Place | Favourable months | Warmest month, avg. high (°C) | Coldest month, avg. high (°C) | Rainy days a year (≥ 1 mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Florence | April | 34.4 | 12.5 | 126 |
| Rome | September, October | 33.8 | 13.6 | 107 |
| Sicily | May, June, September, October | 30.9 | 14.8 | 80 |
| Venice | June, July, August | 29.3 | 8.5 | 107 |
Figures measured at the weather station nearest each place, then averaged over the warmest and the coldest months of the year — not over a fixed calendar season. Each destination page carries its own month-by-month table, its station and its sample size.
Getting around
High-speed trains connect Rome, Florence and Venice on journeys of one to three hours, and they beat flying comfortably once transfers are counted. Venice has no cars at all: you arrive at a terminus and continue on foot or by public waterbus. Sicily is reached by air or by ferry across the strait, and a hire car is close to necessary once there. Airports are unusually close in: 4 km from Florence, 7 km from Venice, 12 and 24 km from Rome.
Budget
Country price level compared with France : −3 %
Price index for restaurants and hotels, France = 1000, from European purchasing power parities. It is a country average: it says nothing about one hotel in particular.
Destinations in Italy
FlorenceFlorence sits in a basin of the Arno valley, ringed by hills that hold the summer heat in and keep the sea breeze out. Its historic core is…
RomeTwo thousand years of building are stacked on the same seven hills in Rome, often inside the same block: a Renaissance palace on Roman foundations, a baroque church…
SicilySicily is an island the size of a small country, with Greek temples on one coast, an active volcano on the other and a baroque hinterland between them…
VeniceVenice is built on a lagoon, without a single road for cars, and every movement happens on foot or by boat. That one constraint governs the whole trip…Frequently asked questions
Which Italian city suits a short first trip?
Rome if you want breadth and can handle scale, Florence if three days of concentrated art is the point, Venice if the strangeness of the place matters more than the museums. Trying to combine all three in under a week produces a blur of stations. Two cities and a slow pace beat three and a schedule.
Is Italy cheaper than France?
Only just, by a few points on our index, so the country is not where you save. The savings come from position and habit: a room outside the historic centre, coffee taken standing at the counter, a set-price lunch rather than an evening menu, and trains booked ahead instead of on the day.
Updated on 21 September 2026