Italy's 11 national holidays, and Ferragosto

Italy has 11 national civil holidays set by law 260¹ of 1949: January 1 and 6, April 25, Easter Monday, May 1, June 2, August 15, November 1, December 8, December 25 and December 26.

What the law says, and what it means at street level

Law 260¹ of May 27, 1949, with its later amendments, lists those days alongside Sundays; DPR 792¹/1985 governs the religious holidays agreed with the Church. On all of them public offices close and many businesses run short hours or shut.

For a traveler the effect is uneven. Museums and tourist districts often work through a holiday; banks, post offices, pharmacies on rotation and small neighborhood businesses do not.

Easter Monday is the only Holy Week holiday

Only 1 day of Holy Week is a national holiday in Italy: the Monday after Easter, Lunedi dell'Angelo, known to everyone as Pasquetta. Good Friday is an ordinary working day nationally.

You will read that Good Friday is a holiday in the autonomous province of Bolzano. That exception is not confirmed by the source we checked, so it is not stated here as fact. Easter itself is movable, and we have not verified the 2027 date on a primary source.

August 15: the day the cities empty

August 15, the Assumption, is a national holiday and the peak of the Italian summer exodus. Shops, restaurants and services close widely in the big cities, coastal and mountain resorts fill to their limit, and the motorways carry the heaviest outbound traffic of the year.

The holiday status is verified on a primary source. The closures and the traffic are a well documented pattern rather than a measured statistic, which is worth knowing before someone quotes you a percentage of businesses closed.

More on that month, including the law that makes those closures a choice, on August in Italy.

Rome adds June 29

Rome celebrates its patrons, Saints Peter and Paul, on June 29, a local holiday on top of the 11 national ones. Offices close, many shops close, and visitors who did not know about it find a normal Tuesday behaving like a Sunday.

Other cities have their own patron days on other dates. If your trip has a fixed appointment, an archive visit or a town hall errand, check the local calendar for that comune.

Bridge days: no 2027 table here

Italians build a ponte by taking 1 or 2 days off next to a holiday that falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, which turns 11 fixed dates into several long weekends. Where those fall in 2027 depends on the calendar, and we have not published a verified table.

The practical consequence is the same every year: trains, coastal hotels and mountain roads fill on those weekends. If your dates touch one, book earlier than you would otherwise.

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