The Climate of Italy, Region by Region

Italy doesn't have a climate. It has 20. A capoluogo-by-capoluogo guide with recent data and an honest look at the part the brochures skip.

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Two truths and one lie about Italy:

1. Italy has amazing food.

2. Italy’s climate is nice and warm.

3. Italians love to be fashionable.

If you’re moving to Italy for the nice weather, you’ll find it. In some places. The lie you’ve been told is that it’s nice and warm across the board. Parts of it are. Large parts of it are not.

This article is really 90% careful collection and verification of data, and 10% words. I’ll show you where each capital region stands. We’re dealing with 20 different climates under the tricolored umbrella term “Italy.”

One note before we get started. The numbers below are from the WMO 1991-2020 normals. Recent data by climate statistics standards, but Italy’s average temperature in 2024 was already 1.33°C warmer than the 1991-2020 baseline, according to ISPRA.

So whatever you see in the table is the floor of what you’ll experience. It will be slightly warmer in practice.

The patterns that will surprise you

Before any city-by-city details, here are three things that surprise almost everyone.

Potenza (Basilicata), in the deep south, gets more annual snow than Milano. Average January temperature in Potenza: 4.9°C. In Milano: 3.5°C. Close, but here’s the deal: Potenza sits at 819 meters in the Lucanian Apennines and gets snow on more than ten days a year! Milano, in the North, increasingly doesn’t.

The wettest large city in Italy is on the Mediterranean coast. Genova (Liguria) gets 1,080 mm of rain a year, more than any other regional capital. This is due to the warm sea air hitting the mountains behind the city. The all-time daily rainfall record for any Italian station was set in a Genova neighborhood (Bolzaneto) with a whopping 948mm in just 24 hours.

Cagliari gets less rain than Marrakech. Sardinia’s capital has genuinely remarkable weather. What’s particularly nice about it is the lack of rain. Just 425 mm a year over the course of 62 rainy days. It’s also the sunniest regional capital in Italy at 2,720 hours of annual sunshine. In terms of sizable cities, only a couple of Sicilian cities (which are not capital of region) beat it. If you wanted to know where to go to reliably find dry warmth in Italy, Cagliari should be at the top of your list.

Even Italians will be surprised by some of these facts. Their idea of Italian weather is often strongly shaped by the particular region they experienced the most. Keep reading and you’ll have a more accurate picture than them.

North vs. south is the wrong question

The stereotype for Italian weather is pretty simple: north cold, south warm. This is largely true, but it’s an oversimplification. Elevation, distance from the sea, and whether cold or warm winds sweep the area all significantly affect the local climate.

Aosta sits in the Alps at 580 meters, surrounded by 4,000-meter peaks, and gets 555 mm of rain a year. That’s less than Bari. The valley is shielded by Mont Blanc and Gran Paradiso. The dominant winter wind is Föhn, which is warm and dry. Aosta hit 40.4°C in June 2019!

Fun fact: A common (improper) Italian term for a hair dryer is fon.

Milano has the least sunshine of any regional capital in Italy at 1,900 hours a year. For comparison, London gets 1,650. That’s the difference between imagining outdoor cafés in winter and actually living through grey weeks. The Po Valley is one of the foggiest, least-windy areas in Europe. It’s also very industrialized, resulting in the most polluted air in the EU.

Firenze has the hottest summer days of any regional capital north of Napoli. Average July high: 32.3°C. The Arno valley traps the heat. The 2017 heat wave hit 42.5°C. Winter can have surprisingly cold snaps. Tuscany is not the gentle climate the brochures suggest.

Campobasso, capital of Molise, is at 700 meters and has the coolest July maximum of any southern capital, 27°C. That’s lower than Aosta. People move here for the cheap real estate and discover it’s not as warm as the latitude would suggest.

Catanzaro, capital of Calabria, has the mildest January night of any continental Italian capital. Average minimum: 7°C, higher than Naples. The geography works the magic: the city sits at 320 meters above sea level on a strip of land between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Ionian Sea. Two seas plus elevation result in a microclimate that doesn’t quite exist anywhere else in Italy.

The actual gentle Mediterranean climate, the one tourists imagine mostly exists in coastal Sicily, coastal Sardinia, the Ligurian Riviera, the Lazio coast, the Naples-Salerno stretch, and the Salento in Apulia.

Outside those areas, Italy gets continental, transitional, or genuinely cold for four months of the year. If you’re picking a region because you read that Italy has a Mediterranean climate, study the table below, or you may be picking a region that’s a lot closer to your own hometown.

The reference table

Below is the one-page image reference I compiled, including a printable PDF version.

All 20 capoluoghi, temperatures in representative months, sun and rain totals, snow frequency, and microclimate notes.

If you’re using this to choose where to live in Italy, remember that climate is only one input.

But it’s an important one. It is the easiest one to research and the hardest to fix once you’ve signed the lease. Use the table.

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