April in Italy: what is open, what fills up

Only one day of Holy Week is a public holiday in Italy, the Monday after Easter, and April 1 is the date Pompeii switches to its summer entry bands of 15,000² tickets in the morning and 5,000² in the afternoon.

Holy Week works, Easter Monday does not

Good Friday is an ordinary working day in Italy, nationally. Shops open, offices open, trains run to a weekday timetable, and the processions that fill the evening in many towns happen after the working day, not instead of it.

The single statutory day is the Monday after Easter, Lunedi dell'Angelo, which Italians call Pasquetta and spend outside the cities. Easter itself is movable, and we have not confirmed a future date on a primary source, so check the year you are traveling before you build a week around it.

April 1 changes how Pompeii sells tickets

From April 1 to October 31 the archaeological park splits its daily ceiling of 20,000² into two bands: a maximum of 15,000² visitors between 9:00 am and noon (09:00 to 12:00) and 5,000² between noon and 5:30 pm (12:00 to 17:30). Outside those months the 20,000² is a single pool.

The ticket has carried the visitor's name since November 15, 2024 and an identity document is checked at the gate, so a spare ticket cannot be handed to a friend. The measure followed single days above 36,000² people, on a site that took more than 4 million visitors in the year before the rule.

The temperature, before anyone tells you it is warm

Rome averages 56.5°F (13.6°C) through April on the 1991-2020 normals, with a mean daily maximum of 65.8°F (18.8°C) and a mean minimum of 47.5°F (8.6°C). Florence runs a warmer afternoon, 68.0°F (20.0°C), and a colder night, 46.6°F (8.1°C).

Those are averages from stations on the edge of each city, so the middle of the day in a stone piazza is hotter and the hour after sunset is colder. Pack for both ends of a 20-degree Fahrenheit swing inside one day.

April is not the dry month

Florence records 67.2 mm of rain in an average April, more than every month from May through September and second only in spring to the annual pattern that peaks in November at 115.3 mm⁵. The dry month in Tuscany is July, at 24.6 mm⁵.

That matters for outdoor plans in Chianti and for anything involving a hill town on foot. Two full days of rain in an April week is inside the normal, not bad luck.

What to put on which day

Put the archaeological sites in the morning band, because Pompeii sells 15,000² of its 20,000² daily tickets for 9:00 am to noon. Put the interiors on a wet day and keep them movable, since the weather in April changes faster than the timetable does.

If your trip touches Easter, treat the Monday as a Sunday for services and as a Saturday for crowds on the coast and in the hills. The other 10 national holidays are on the public holidays page.

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