Italian Summer Isn’t Just Striped Umbrellas and Beach Lidos

Daily life amidst a heat wave and not taking a months-long vacation.

Jun 24, 2025

Italian summer is officially here—not only marked by last weeks summer solisicte and a heat wave before the middle of June, but my social media newsfeeds flooded with coastal content from both foreigners and locals jet (and boat) setting to various Italian seaside spots.

We haven’t planned our end-of-July vacation yet. I had anticipated that we’d be moving back to Rome by now—into a new apartment. But if you’ve ever rented in a major (or even minor) Italian city, you know that the housing market feels like an uphill battle. The listings are few, the prices have skyrocketed, Airbnbs have swallowed whole neighborhoods even outside the city centers, and landlords are increasingly picky. If you're a couple and one of you is without the prized contratto indeterminato and you don’t earn three times the rent? Back of the line!

So here we are, trusting timing (and maybe manifesting something by writing this—dear universe, send apartment). In the meantime, our summer holiday’s on pause. Luckily, living near three islands makes it easy to hop on a ferry for a spontaneous long weekend.

While sitting here with my face inching closer and closer to the fan, I started thinking about all the things I’ve come to embrace—sometimes dread—after over six years of living here. Because Italian summer isn’t only striped umbrellas and beach-side lidos. It’s more than that:

There’s something so beautiful about a city in the dead of summer—Rome, Naples, Milan—the slowing down of life, no traffic, no local chatter from neighbors, no children running amok in the nearby piazza. There’s a somber stillness and a kind of grateful emptiness that only you and the few lingering locals get to experience that make you want to ask them—are you feeling what I’m feeling, or is it just the heat getting to my head?

Italian summer is not daring to turn on the stove or oven, relying instead on dishes that are essentially no-mess, no-waste, no-heat-required—like bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and mozzarelline, which basically become my bodily make-up for the next three months.

Italian summer is finally making it out past 6 PM for a drink—Spritz, G&T, you name it—at your no-frills neighborhood bar that somehow makes a better cocktail than any 5-star hotel in the city center. It’s served in water glasses, sipped from some shitty plastic chairs, with a bit of local entertainment in the form of overheard conversations that always start and end like: Ma che caldo! or Ma quanto fa caldo oggi!

It’s the early morning walk—I’m talking 5:45 AM—stepping to the beat of cicadas buzzing and lone birds chirping at dawn, before the sweltering heat takes over. Those brief moments when it feels like the whole world is yours—cheesy, but for real—because there’s not a soul in sight.

Italian summer is mom-and-pop shops slowly closing down one by one, and as you pass each sign, you whisper under your breath, beati loro!

Italian summer is shutters drawn for most of the day, with just enough space left open for a sliver of light to sneak through, signaling that it’s still daylight. It’s dangling laundry under the blazing sun that dries in under an hour.

Italian summer is a morning cappuccino freddo. But the real lottery is whether it will actually be freddo.

It’s a walk to the local produce stand and a full-on celebration of seasonality—first come the strawberries, then cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, melons, figs, and finally grapes that carry us into early fall.

Italian summer is the fleeting 20-minute relief from the heat—a little church, a spot under the metro line, or one of the rare public buses with a blissful breeze from the A/C.

So while life continues to feel heavy with the state of the world, FOMO is definitely real, and month-long vacations aren’t and don’t exactly have to be the “norm,” Italian summer isn’t just about pebbled beaches—it’s also the little things that define everyday life, the ones those of us who live here get to know. Like an unspoken, inside secret.