Cinque Terre

My trips to the Cinque Terre were too long ago to provide useful information, even about weather. But the website timeanddate.com has actual, historical, day-by-day weather statistics going back about ten years.

Monterosso al Mare weather -- April 2025

You can explore any months you're interested in, using the pull-down box at the right, just above the graph. Check multiple years, because there can be considerable variation. I like to look at the most recent five years.

Precipitation in that part of Italy seems highly seasonal. There's a climate chart in the Wikipedia entry for nearby La Spezia that has monthly averages you might find useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Spezia

High season is May thru September. November thru March are off season, with many shops, hotels and restaurants closed, and reduced ferry and train service. Off season can be cool to cold, with daytime highs averaging less than 15°C. Wet conditions could see trail closures. That leaves April and October as shoulder seasons, but even those will see crowds.

We visited Cinque Terre this past May for 3 nights, and we loved our stay there. So glad we visited. Yes, there were crowds, but the weather was perfect, sunny and never too hot or too cool. May is less crowded than the summer months.

Spending a couple nights is the best way to experience CT. It started getting crowded between 10 - 10:30am, and the daytrippers would leave around 4pm. So before 10am and after 4pm it was wonderful. Evenings were not crowded at all. We saw some spectacular sunsets while there.

We always got seats on the trains. When you first disembark, it will be crowded. But we noticed that daytrippers and tour group people don't venture very far from the train stations. So the further you walk into the villages the less crowded it got.

We stayed in Manarola at the Hotel Marina Piccola, and we absolutely enjoyed our stay here.