Italy in August

For tourists, Italy is always open. True, big cities get a little quieter as residents go on vacation and fewer cars clog the roads, at least in Rome. My neighborhood, Parioli, is a ghost town and I love it in August! But restaurants and shops serving tourism are, for the most part, still available to serve you.

10 nights or 9? (Better to plan in number of nights than days.) If 9:

• 3 or 4 Venice
• 2 Verona
• 3 or 4 Florence

anne,

If you decide to go to Verona for the Opera, it's a good idea to book a hotel as soon as you have your dates finalized. They tend to fill up quickly during opera season.

Make sure there is a performance on the day(s) you are in Verona, you can google "Verona opera 2016" for dates.

If you could add one more city which would you choose? We have been to Cinque Terre and though we loved it would like to discover somewhere new. Either a day trip from a home base of Florence or cutting back our time in Florence and adding another city for overnight. We have seen many of the main sights in Florence, We won't have a car and will be flying in and out of Venice.

In August I'd go as high as possible to the Dolomites and/or Lake Garda (as deep in the water as possible).
Forget Florence. I'm from Florence and I should tell u to go there, since it's my city. But You'll die of heat and mosquitoes there in August.

Roberto - Thank you very much for the advice, we know it is not the best time to be in Italy but the flights are cheap and we are teachers and are limited with our time off. Florence is my husband's favorite place on the planet and I just don't think we could be in your country without visiting your city!!

Hopefully Florence won't quickly become his least favorite city in the heat and crowds of August.... I cold not tolerate it in the summer and have now been a few times in the off season and it was a totally different and enjoyable place. At the very least, try to get up really early, take a nap mid day and come out again in the evening:) I would try to stay in smaller towns and mountain areas at least part of the time. Same advice for Venice about napping midday! But.... I would rather be in the heat in all these places than be at home! We travel when we can make it happen. Enjoy!

Well. If you insist, then just hope for a cooler than average August. Some years you get some early summer storms that may cool things off (or make it worse and muggy).
Don't worry about crowds. August is the slowest month in the high season. Both local residents and Italian tourists know better and avoid staying in town in August when it's too damn hot. Other than foreign tourists (many American) downtown, the city outside the historical center is largely a ghost town, especially on weekends. But I must admit I liked spending August in Florence when I lived there in my youth. No traffic whatsoever and I was working for the City at the Costoli swimming complex, so I could cool off (also no competition from other Italian guys when picking up pretty foreign girls visiting the city).

Had never heard that about Florence in August but it must be gospel coming from Roberto. It's my favorite town as well, in all of Europe. Having been there in mid-October (fairly crowded but temperate and tolerable) and in early March (cold and windy but it was like we had the place to ourselves which was absolutely wonderful) I can say without hesitation that I will always make Florence part of my itinerary. Actually, the lack of tourists in August almost sounds appealing. Are some restaurants and museums closed in August, Roberto?

I would stay in an air-conditioned apartment or hotel, get up early, get your market shopping done, spend the heat of the day in an air-conditioned museum (a place like the Uffizi does have A/C, doesn't it, Roberto?) or get on the train for a daytrip out of the city somewhere. Then come back for a nap and a late dinner somewhere, finishing off at a gelateria. Crema flavor, thank you...

Sounds pretty good to me!

Had never heard that about Florence in August but it must be gospel coming from Roberto.
Not Gospel. There is no Saint Roberto among the Apostles. Simply statistical data.
You don't have to take my word for it, or the Gospels, you can see it for yourself.
For example, go to page 3 of 4 of the document below (the quickest I could find in the City of Florence website). It refers to 2007 and 2008, but it will be true any year. Take 2007 example (the year pre-financial crisis). Add the tourist presence statistics (nights spent at hotels and other facilities) for each month (stats are split between Italian tourists and foreign in the document).
Once you add every month, you will notice that August has the the lowest number of tourist presence (Italians+foreign) for any given month from March to October. So only November, December, January and February have fewer tourists than August. And that doesn't even take into consideration local residents, who leave on vacation in large number in August.
http://www.comune.firenze.it/materiali/promozione_economica/indicatori_turistici2006-2008.pdf

Are some restaurants and museums closed in August, Roberto?
Some (several) restaurants do close as the owners go on vacation. It's the slowest month in the peak season, so it's the best time to go (unless they prefer to vacation in winter). Museums are generally open.

(a place like the Uffizi does have A/C, doesn't it, Roberto?)
Yes of course. Works of art require climate control for preservation.

What about a base in Bologna and day trips by train? The Ravenna sights are wonderful.

Love all those destinations. BUT, unless you've been to Florence and Venice in Aug. I warn you against the heat and crowds. the crowds in Venice are HORRIBLE! We were there in 2014 and Venice was 98 degrees F. and Florence was 101 F.

@Cindi, well I was farther north in 2014 (Prague, Vienna, Budapest) and, guess what, the temps were over 100 there too (and humid) so I guess that was a banner year for heat.

There are ways to deal with the heat, some of which have been mentioned previously. So I say, any chance you get to go to Venice and/or Florence, do it! You travel when you can and take the bad with the good (weather and crowd wise), just have to adjust for those minor inconvenience.

Love all those destinations. BUT, unless you've been to Florence and Venice in Aug. I warn you against the heat and crowds. the crowds in Venice are HORRIBLE! We were there in 2014 and Venice was 98 degrees F. and Florence was 101 F. No matter what, enjoy, enjoy!!

My daughter and I went to Italy in August a few year ago. We did not find that the major destinations were too crowded; as you said, many Italians were vacationing. It WAS hot! If you just expect it and plan for it, it's no trouble. Very loose clothing and lots of water (prosecco was great too!) If you only have 10 days, I would focus on just a few places. I've learned that running from place to place just to see it all is not ideal. This all depends on if you are needing to make a round trip and fly home from Venice or if you will fly home from Florence (which is my advice).

It's just my preference, but if I'm in Italy during the summer, I want to spend some good time near the ocean. Venice does have beaches (although I've not spent time there, so can't make a comment). Have you thought about taking the ferry to Croatia since you are so close? It's inexpensive and a nice way to have the full Mediterranean experience. You could spend 3-4 days in Venice, 2 days in Pula, and then go back to the mainland and down to Florence for 3 days. If you didn't want to bother with the ferry, you could also take a train from Venice to Cinque Terra which is absolutely spectacular in August. Fortunately, the whole country is fairly small, so even taking a jaunt over to the west coast and then to Florence is totally doable. Of course, you'd miss Verona in both of these examples, but my experience was that it wasn't such a unique experience (such as Venice and the coast) that I couldn't miss it.

Just my thoughts :)
-Lynn

I bounced around Europe throughout the brutally hot summer of 2015, and this is what I observed about air conditioning:

In Italy and the Balkans, a museum often didn't feel air conditioned unless it had paintings. I looked at a lot of Greek and Roman antiquities with perspiration trickling down my back. This may not apply to the really big-name museums in places like Rome. I visited primarily smaller cities.

In Italy south of the Dolomites, many restaurants were air conditioned, and virtually all 3-star accommodations (including B&Bs) had a/c. I did run into two hotel whose promised a/c wasn't functioning. Don't know whether the chillers were broken or they were too cheap to cool the air before circulating it. I suspect one fell in each of those categories.

Bolzano and Bressanone up in the Sud Tirol were a problem. A lot of 3-star places up there don't think they need a/c because hot spells are rather infrequent. Didn't find many moderately priced air-conditioned restaurants, either. I literally had to take chairlifts up into the Dolomites (no hardship) to cool off, since neither hotel nor restaurants nor (many) museums had a/c.

As I recall, restaurants in eastern Germany were more likely to be air-conditioned than those in the Sud Tirol.

In the many places where smoking is allowed (or winked at) at outdoor cafes, I often had to decide between sweltering indoors (where smoking usually was truly prohibited) where no air was stirring or sitting outdoors where the breeze helped but I risked a headache from second-hand smoke.

In my experience, it's possible to run into non-air-conditioned cars on local trains as well. That happened on occasion even in eastern Germany. Never did figure out the pattern; I just sat and wilted.

To get back to your question of what else to see, I loved Padova and Ferrara, and both had the advantage of getting far fewer tourists than Verona, much less Venice or Florence. They make great day-trips (get advance reservations for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova - breathtaking!) I have no idea if, weather-wise, they are better, worse, or the same as you other destinations.