Italy is Best between October and April

What was once considered the “off season” is now the best Italy travel season of all

Italy has broken two records this year : for tourist numbers and for extreme weather.

Some of our clients could only travel this spring and summer.  And Insider’s Italy was always at their side, with swift, creative and immaculate assistance.  Every summertime trip we have planned has included remarkable under-visited locations that are our style and are not on the Instagram radar.

But please, if you can chose, avoid traveling between May and September.  Let us plan a trip for you during the best months of the year, from October to April.

If you have children, consider December holiday periods and spring breaks.  Children will love Italy all the more when their first encounters with masterpieces of art and architecture are without distracting swarms.  Kids’ first (or second or third) experiences with Italian food will be all the more memorable when waiters have time to explain things to them, to indulge them — and the dessert trolley is always full.  And most of all, when they never need to wait in line.

Here we have the same room in the Uffizi Gallery.  The first image is December 21 of last winter, and what follows is July 21 of this year.

Italy’s culture is available for 365 days of the year.

From October to April, cities regain their original beauty and fascination.

And you have world-famous archaeological sites all to yourself.

Italy returns to its more natural rhythms.

Hotels are mostly empty.

And have the lowest rates of the year.

Golden November landscape — in Umbria, Piedmont, and up and down this magic country — offers nuance and atmosphere.

And eating is best.

Restaurants are patronized by mostly Italians.

Imagine visiting the Accademia Gallery and finding yourself alone with the David.

Most of Italy’s best cultural events — specifically classical music, for example at La Scala and at Rome’s Teatro del Opera and Florence’s new Teatro del Opera — do not run during the late spring through late summer periods.

The only time to visit Venice — really — is November through the week before Carnival.

No tourist traffic on the Grand Canal in early December.

This is a short, glorious period for visiting when the city’s light is magical, you do not need to book restaurants, and you — like the Venetians — can enjoy the canals and campi free of the millions who descend, unsustainably, on the island city during the rest of the year.

Running in a Venetian campo that is over-run for eight months of the year, but empty in January.

And back to food.  The food in Italy in winter?  A Washington DC client told me wistfully that he was sorry that he had selected December as his travel date only because he would miss wonderful summertime foods.

Wonderful summertime foods?  In most of Italy, the best foods appear from autumn through early spring.  Think of truffles…

blood oranges, artichokes, and delectable puntarelle.

Fennel and arugula, radicchio, and the exquisite greens that are the staple from central Italian south to Sicilian kitchens.

Fettuccine with porcini mushrooms.

Think of cheeses that are too rich for summertime dining.

Sicilian Blood Oranges, are available all over Italy, but in the winter only.

Think of new season olive oils and new season wines (November and December.)

We plan olive picking and olive oil making weeks for October and November.

Winter  — what for many Americans feels more like early autumn — comes late to southern Italy.

Southern Italian winters are sun-kissed.

We swim in Amalfi in November.  So will you.  Today’s water temperature is 82 degrees Fahrenheit, thanks to the summer heat wave.  Come November water will still be more than comfortably warm.

Beaches and water are tourist free then.

The celebrated Path of the Gods on the Amalfi coast is a highway of walkers between Easter and October. But in November, expect this..

Finally, the winter sales : artisan goods, clothes, linens, tableware and nearly every beautiful thing you can imagine that Italians make and sell. Everything goes on sale, usually substantially on sale. The Saldi in winter — unlike the Saldi in August, which predictably coincide with weeks of heatwave — are lively and not languid events, and it is fun alternating sightseeing, good eating and Saldi shopping throughout those January – early February days.

Again, we travel almost exclusively in the winter.  Won’t you, this autumn and in 2024, join us?