Italy in August: What I Should Have Known About Ferragosto
I booked two weeks in Italy for the second half of August because that was when I had leave. I did not know what Ferragosto was. I found out in Bologna on the 14th, when the restaurant I had walked twenty minutes to had a handwritten sign saying it would reopen on 2 September.
Ferragosto
15 August, and the peak of the Italian holiday period. What it means in practice:
Family-run businesses close, often for one to three weeks. Not the big tourist restaurants, which stay open — the small ones that are the reason to eat in Italy.
Cities empty of Italians and fill with visitors. Bologna in August has a strange quality: a great food city with a third of its kitchens shut and its residents at the sea.
The coast fills completely. Every Italian who left the city went there, and prices reflect it. I could not find anything on the Ligurian coast at any price for the week of the 15th.
It is not a disaster — plenty stays open — but it inverts what you expect. The cities are quiet and shut; the coast is packed and expensive.
The heat, at the archaeological sites
Rome in August was 36°C. The Roman Forum and Palatine Hill have essentially no shade, and I went at midday because that was when my ticket slot was.
It was genuinely unpleasant, and I looked at very little of it properly.
What works: opening time or the last two hours. The Forum at 8:30am is cool, empty and beautifully lit. Pompeii the same — and Pompeii has even less shade.
Carry water. Rome's nasoni, the small street fountains, run continuously with clean cold water and there are around 2,500 of them. That was the single most useful thing I learned in Italy.
What still worked
The cities were quiet in a good way. Bologna's porticoes with nobody under them, Rome's residential neighbourhoods empty in the evening. Once I adjusted to the closures, August Rome was less crowded in the parts where people actually live.
The south was better than the north. Naples does not empty out in the same way and never stops cooking. Puglia was hot but functioning.
Aperitivo culture carried the evenings. From 6 to 9pm a drink at €8–12 comes with enough food to be dinner, in the north especially.
What I would do instead
| Month | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Late April – early June | Best. Warm, open, moderate prices |
| July | Hot and busy but businesses open |
| Aug 1–10 | Hot, busy, closures beginning |
| Aug 10–25 | Avoid if possible |
| September | Excellent. Warm sea, harvest, thinner crowds |
| October | Very good, cooler |
September is the answer if you have any flexibility. Warm enough to swim, everything reopened, and the major sites noticeably less crowded than in July.
The other August-specific things
Book accommodation far earlier than you would for any other month, particularly anywhere coastal.
Check restaurant closures before walking somewhere. Many post their August dates on their door or their social media in July.
Trains are busy around the 15th in both directions as the country moves to the coast and back.
The mountains are the exception — the Dolomites in August are excellent, cooler, and open, because that is their season.
If August is the only time you can go, go to the Alps or Naples and skip the coast and the inland archaeological sites entirely.