Tuscany in Winter: Who It Suits, Whether It Snows, and Where You Can Still Walk

From December to February the first question guests ask me is nearly always the same one. Is Tuscany in winter actually worth it?

Honestly, yes for some people and no for others.

Down on the plain around Lucca and Pisa, January highs mostly sit between 8 and 12 degrees. The ground is green, it carries your boots, and you can be outside almost every day. Snow settles from roughly 1,400 metres up, though it can fall lower than that. What you give up is daylight, nine hours of it instead of fifteen, a good share of the agriturismi, which shut for the season, and a few mountain roads that want winter tyres or are closed outright.

Coming for the cities, for low prices and empty paths? Then January and February are your months. Long summit days and warm evenings on a terrace want May or June instead. And if you want snow you can count on, go to the Alps. I’d rather say that now than have you find it out on the spot.

Who winter in Tuscany suits

People who want Florence and Lucca without the queues. People who walk whatever the month and would sooner have the path to themselves than have it warm. Anyone with a camera, because the sun stays low all day and the clear days are the clearest of the year. And anyone on a budget, since rooms in many places cost a third to a half less than in summer.

It doesn’t suit anyone who arrives with a fixed picture in their head, sun-warmed hills and long evenings outside. That’s a June picture, and no amount of planning turns January into it.

Does it snow in Tuscany?

In the towns and on the lower hills it almost never does, and the Nottolini aqueduct, at about 100 metres, sees it only in an exceptional winter. In the Apennines it does, from around the altitude of the Acquerino forests at about 1,000 metres, where January is the month it’s most likely to lie, and most often on the ridges above 1,400 metres between December and February, though how much falls and how long it stays changes from one winter to the next.

Some winters bring several snowfalls down to 800 metres and the beech woods change completely. Others stay dry, and apart from a thin cover on the highest ridges nothing happens. I can’t tell you in October whether your January week will find snow at Acquerino. Nobody here can, and the last few years have made it harder to call. There is skiing, for what it’s worth. Abetone sits at close to 1,400 metres and has lifts and cross-country trails, and even there nobody can promise you snow for a given week.

The weather: mild below, winter on top

The Tyrrhenian Sea is under thirty kilometres away and keeps the plain mild. Frost in the morning, yes. Frost all day, rarely. On the Apennine crest at 1,700 metres, January means frost and wind as the normal state, well below minus five in a cold spell, and the wind takes that a good deal lower.

The rain here comes in bursts of two or three days and then clears, in my experience, and winter isn’t even the wettest season. On calm mornings fog sits over the Lucca plain and the Arno valley, usually gone by late morning. Then there’s the tramontana, the cold north wind. Horrible to walk into, but it brings the clearest days of the year: from the ridge you see the sea and the islands, and with a bit of luck Corsica. And the sun stays low from morning to afternoon, so anyone who photographs gets side light for most of the day instead of an hour of it at each end. The averages for the plain and the crest, month by month, are in my Tuscany weather by month guide.

Want that low winter light with someone who knows where it falls? I take photographers out on private photo tours, timed for the hour it lines up.

Nine hours of daylight

At the solstice the sun sets here at 16:44, at New Year at 16:50, and it’s properly dark a good half hour after that. By mid-February it’s 17:47, so an extra hour in the afternoon.

For a walking day that means starting at half eight, nine at the latest, and the reason isn’t the cold. The afternoon is basically over by four. I’m off any open ground while it’s still light, under the trees by around half past three. A route that takes six hours in June I don’t shorten in January. I pick a different one, four to five hours. The head torch goes in the pack regardless, because a twisted ankle at two in the afternoon is a different problem in winter than it is in July.

Half days work just as well, three flat hours, out after lunch. Plenty of my winter guests choose that and I often plan it that way from the start. Lunch makes up for a lot anyway. People eat long and warm here at this time of year, and a day that ends at four and carries on at half five by a fire is a good day.

What’s open and what’s closed

This is the part you’d otherwise find out when you get here.

• Cities and museums run as normal. Florence, Lucca, Pisa and Siena are emptier in January and February than at any other time. The Uffizi and the Accademia open all year, Mondays excepted.
• Many agriturismi and country hotels shut from December into March. Out in the countryside that’s the rule. Check before you settle on an area.
• On the coast the bathing establishments are closed, the towns carry on. The Carnevale di Viareggio breaks the quiet, with its float parades, usually in February and some years into March depending on Easter, dates fixed fresh every year. On parade days the town is full and rooms are scarce. What you can walk around there is in the Viareggio post.
• Not every thermal bath is open. A smaller place near Bagni di Lucca keeps going through winter, and sitting in hot water with five degrees in the air is exactly when it’s best, so phone ahead. In Montecatini Terme the historic drinking halls like the Tettuccio open only in season, though treatments carry on in winter, in some houses and not others. The walks within reach from there are in the Montecatini post.
• Mountain roads want winter equipment. At altitude a winter-equipment rule applies, winter tyres or chains in the car, usually from mid-November to mid-April, set by whoever runs the road. Some passes close for the season regardless, like the unpaved road over the Croce Arcana.
• Mountain huts open only in part. Some close altogether, others on weekends and only if the weather allows. Phone first. Never trust the summer hours.
• In small villages, businesses take their holidays. Chiuso per ferie in January is normal. A village with two restaurants can have both shut at once.

Where you can walk in winter

It all comes down to altitude. From the bottom up.

The plain and the low hills, up to about 400 metres. Walkable all year, even after rain. The Nottolini aqueduct runs out of Lucca into the hills, 9.1 kilometres in all with barely 50 metres of climb, three hours with stops. It starts in town, close to the station and the walls, so you don’t need a car. In summer there’s no shade on it. In winter that’s exactly the point, and after rain the arches reflect in the standing water along the path.

Private guided hike

Nottolini Aqueduct

The aqueduct doubles as a sundial. Once a day the light runs straight down its corridor of arches, at a time that shifts through the year.

• About 3 hours
• €165 per group
• Reachable by train
• Longer route to a view over Lucca, on request

Easy · 9.1 km (5.7 mi) · 50 m (164 ft) ascent

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Monte Pisano between Pisa and Lucca, up to around 900 metres. South-facing slopes, Mediterranean woodland, olive groves, and ground that dries quickly after rain. Several starting points sit right on the railway line.

The Apennines below the snow line, 600 to 1,200 metres. Beech woods with no leaves on, so you see between the trunks, and streams that actually carry water for once. The Acquerino forests show this best in my area, and in January you meet nobody there. Winter is very unlikely to stop this walk. Snow may lie on it some weeks, and when it does and the path is still sound, the forest goes quiet in a way summer never manages.

Private guided hike

Riserva Acquerino

The reserve is famous across Italy for its red deer, and in autumn you may hear the stags calling through the valleys.

• About 6 hours
• €240 per group
• Shorter or longer day on request

Medium-Easy · 10.9 km (6.8 mi) · 375 m (1,230 ft) ascent

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The Calvana ridge above Prato, to 916 metres. The trees fall away on the crest and you stay in the open for most of the day, with Prato and Florence below you. On a tramontana day you get the full wind and the full view, and the wild horses are what my guests come for. Winter is very unlikely to stop this one either, and it can be at its most beautiful then.

Private guided hike

The Calvana

Hawthorn bushes dot the high pastures where the wild horses graze, and in spring they flower white. Almost nowhere else in Tuscany looks like this.

• About 5.5 hours
• €290 per group

Medium · 9.9 km (6.2 mi) · 560 m (1,837 ft) ascent

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Above 1,400 metres, only without snow. Lago Scaffaiolo, Lago Nero and Monte Gennaio carry a snow risk from December to February, and with snow on the ground I don’t run them. In a dry spell they can go, but I wouldn’t build a winter trip around them. The Apuan Alps need a separate word. They’re steep karst that’s hard to read in fog, and what counts as a normal mountain path in summer becomes something else under snow and ice. For a first winter day in Tuscany that’s the wrong place.

December

The shortest days of the year, with the sun down at 16:44 by the solstice. The winter-equipment rule on mountain roads is already in force from mid-November. Drive hunts for wild boar run through the month and on until the end of January: Tuesday and Friday are hunting-free days across Italy, hunt days get signposted, and I plan around them. Country accommodation starts to close, so if you want an agriturismo in December, ask before you assume.

January

The quietest month of the whole year. The cities are at their emptiest, the villages hang out chiuso per ferie, and on the Acquerino paths you can walk a full day and meet nobody. It’s also the month snow is most likely to lie in the mid-altitude forests, so this is when the evening-before call on which route matters most. The hunting season ends with the month.

February

Light comes back fast, with sunset at 17:47 by the middle of the month, an hour later than at New Year. Viareggio fills for the Carnevale parades, so if the coast is in your plans, book the room before the dates are out. Ticks are far less active in winter but after a run of mild weeks they aren’t gone; the short version is in the ticks post. The agriturismi start reopening in March, so February is the last month of the closed season out in the country.

All gallery images are original photographs taken by me.

How a guided winter day works

I guide privately only, so it’s you, or you and the people you’re travelling with. No stranger’s bus, no fixed departure. In winter that’s above all a planning question. Which route makes sense gets decided the evening before, on the weather and the state of the roads, and that sets the altitude. If the top isn’t on, we walk lower.

The pace follows the slowest person, and the guests I walk with nearly always go slower than they expected to. Prices are per group, not per person. The base price covers one to three walkers and each walker after that adds €5, and every hike with its price is on the booking page. Ordinary rain doesn’t cancel a day, that’s what rain jackets are for. An orange or red alert from the Regione Toscana covering the ground we’d be walking, for storms, wind, snow or ice, means we postpone, and moving the date costs you nothing.

Layers, a windproof jacket, hat and gloves, boots with grip. Wet limestone and wet beech leaves are slipperier than they look, and that’s the commonest reason a winter day here gets cut short. Whatever a given route needs on top of that, I write to you beforehand. If you don’t have a car, tell me when you write and I’ll help you find a solution. The regional trains run just as reliably in winter, and Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia and Viareggio are all easy by rail; only the high trailheads need a car, and those aren’t on the winter list anyway.

And who it’s for, in the end

Winter here is the everyday version of Tuscany. Nobody in the restaurant has a guidebook open. Some days you meet no one on the path at all.

Too quiet? Then come six weeks earlier, because October and November have their own post.

If you like the sound of it and can live with the day ending at four, come between December and February.