Planning 3 Week Italy Trip for Spring 2025-- March/April or April/May?

If you plan to end with the Amalfi Coast, then I think the earlier dates would be fine, as the ferries begin in April.
I would usually advise the earlier dates, but since you are not interested in doing solely outdoor things, I think the earlier dates might be better. Maybe no dining alfresco in evening, but possibly slightly fewer crowds (maybe just a tad--I would not expect a dramatic difference). I think the places one chooses to go makes more of a difference with crowds than dates.
I tend to see better airfare sales in early spring, so that might help.

From my travels, Italy experiences Easter crowds both the weeks before and after Easter, and the crowds are significant. In addition , 2025 is the Jubilee. We also found closures around Easter, particularly wineries we wanted to visit Easter weekend.
We were in Italy last May, 2023, and experienced unprecedented rain, for the whole two weeks. I mean 48 straight hours of rain in Venice. In the AC, we didn't even see the base of Vesuvius for the first three days. There's really no predicting weather norms anymore. The ferries were canceled by rough seas in May.
In addition, shoulder season has disappeared, and the AC towns of Positano and Amalfi were jam packed already in May.
Check when the AC ferries start running in the spring.
You have done significant research and have a well-paced itinerary. Sorry that your trip did not work out the first time , and condolences.
Here's hoping to a memorable trip!

Hi Kate,

Welcome to the Forum. It is so hard to predict the weather. Like Pat, we were in Italy (arriving on the 26 April and leaving on the 24 May). It rained almost the entire time we were in Italy. The rain and wind were so bad that ferries were cancelled and we couldn’t even get to Capri. We also found that Italy was more crowded in 2023 than it was in 2018 and we went in 2018 in June.

My sister and her husband were in Italy in late March and left the first week of April. Her weather was cooler and rainy as well. I did ask her about crowds and she said that it was not nearly as crowded as when they went to Italy in 2019 in September.

As for the availability of tours in late April and May, we didn’t have any issues with the holidays for tours and restaurants, except on 1 May when we were in Florence. We used 1 May as a travel day and we did find restaurants still open, but not as big of a selection.

As for costs, I believe you will be able to travel at the budget you have put in place during either of those times. The only thing is that we found that the holidays did have higher hotel prices and we needed to book well in advance. The Amalfi Coast is always pricey and will have more tourists in late April and May, so I would book earlier rather than later.

We will be going back to Italy, likely again in 2026 as we have France on the calendar for next year and I would choose May again with the hopes of getting better weather than we had in 2023.

True one can never count on weather, but 2023 was an outlier in terms of May weather--I have been to the Mediterranean in late May just about every year since the early 00s. We have always experienced nearly perfect weather, but the year we had to cancel a trip (to Tuscany), 2023, was a very rainy one, with flooding. I did the cancelled trip in 2024 instead, and had perfect weather, but caveat--I like it much warmer than Kate does!
I'd usually never want to travel in March because I detest cold weather, but I do mostly outdoors things. If I were going to Venice, Florence, and Rome, I would feel less concerned about inclement weather.

I was in Italy -Orvieto, Vernice, Florence and Rome this year March 26-April 16. The weather varied from cool at the beginning with rain off and on to 85 degrees in Rome on April 15. I do not like hot weather so the earlier the better would be my choice. (Although, my sister was in Sorrento around May 7-10 and it was cold with heavy rain, so who knows.)

Our base was in Orvieto. Italy was crowded- Venice did not seem as crowded as when I was there last October; Florence was mobbed on April 7 which was the only day we could visit, and Rome on April 14 was shoulder to shoulder at the Pantheon. We had a wonderful time, but it made me wonder how more crowded it might be a few weeks later.

I'm learning to discount a lot of weather history in my planning. I read that last year was the hottest on record. In my small country, we had about a month longer of summer weather, a shorter, milder winter, and summer weather arrived about 3-4 weeks earlier than "usual." Soooooo . . . .

My last trip to Italy was from Mar 18-Apr 7, 2022, from Venice to Rome with about half in Tuscany and Umbria. It was never cold, and I had only a couple of really warm days in Rome at the end, a little rain. I'm told April is rainier than March, but . . . (see disclaimer above). In my experience crowds and hotel rates get larger as summer approaches. In the past, I've found that April prices can be significantly higher than March. And Easter prices are likely to be higher at least from Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025.

You can find historical daily weather data for past years for most places at timeanddate.com . Here's Rome for last April.

We were in Italy this year, April 26- May 13. The weather was mostly pleasant - sunny or overcast - temperatures around 65 degrees. I was comfortable in a light-weight sweater. We had a few showers which didn't last more than an hour and one day of a torrential down-pour which cancelled the plans for a second day in the Cinque Terre. We were in the CT May 1-2 which are also holidays. The towns were busy but not like the hordes around San Marco in Venice. Venice was not terribly crowded except around San Marco and the Rialto Bridge. Florence was crowded around the Duomo area. We enjoyed a lovely celebratory dinner ($$$) at Gio's in Venice, overlooking the Grand Canal. (Hope this helps with your planning. )

One thing not mentioned above: Though weather is unpredictable, the length of the day is not. Choosing the later travel period will get you days that are more than an hour longer. If typical weather patterns hold (hah!), there will also be more than an extra hour of sunshine per day, on average. Can't really count on that, however.

I visited Rome, Naples and Salerno between mid-February and mid-March 2023. By the end of the trip (when I was back in Rome), the sun was coming up early enough to keep me reasonably happy, and it didn't take until noon for the temperature to hit 40F. (Don't just look at the average high temperature!) Personally, I wouldn't be willing to risk Venice in late-March; chilly and rainy is a combination I try very hard to avoid.

Would it not be possible to reverse the trip, leaving Venice until the end, if you begin the trip in March? I know there can be flight-schedule issues flying home from Venice, but they don't affect all US destinations. Returning from Venice isn't a problem for me in Washington, DC.

I would personally lean toward the earlier trip. We were in the Emilia Romagna region this year from March 14 - 28. The weather was very pleasant and I think we had only one or two days of rain. Hard to predict the weather, as others have noted. There were already more tourists in the area than I had expected for that time of year.
You may definitely find lower pricing on hotels and airfare by doing the earlier trip. In past travels we have found that hotel prices tend to increase in May. Several of our trips spanned April/May and we found that our hotels increased prices when the calendar turned May 1.
You have plenty of time to research pricing for this trip. I would keep watch on airfare and hotel pricing for both the earlier and later trips. Barring consideration of other factors, if a really good airfare sale pops up for either time frame, I would likely choose timing based on that. When booking hotels, I would suggest making reservations that can be cancelled with no penalty. I have made many hotel reservations only to find that the pricing for the same hotel had dropped significantly at a later time. With a flexible cancellation policy, you can generally cancel and rebook at the lower price. This approach primarily when staying in larger hotel chains versus small, family owned, lodgings. Have a great trip!