Italy

Where to surf in Italy

With 7600km of coastline and over 320 known surf spots, Italy has enough waves to keep legions of surfers entertained. Although the surf is often weak and windy, fun pointbreaks and hollow reefs can come to life in a surprising range of weather conditions.

Northern Mediterranean

The Mistral is the driving force for surf in Northern Italy as the W-NW winds have enough fetch to build decent size swells for Sardinia or the reefs of Liguria. Varazze and Levanto hold some of the biggest waves on the mainland, but consistency is not too high with about 120 rideable days a year and most of them are small and onshore. Spring is often the best time, but a little wave can appear at any time of the year. There are classy spots along the Tuscany coast that attract surfers from far afield. Forte Dei Marmi, Viareggio, Livorno and Lillatro are all swell and people magnets. Offshore, Elba island presents an opportunity to ride some hollow, empty reefs in rare SE to SW swells.

Southern Mediterranean

In Southern Italy Lazio is the busiest surf zone being so close to Rome and it has a few hotspots around the crowded reefs of Santa Marinella. Campagnia spots are clustered around Naples. The swell window opens up to include SE swells driven in by the warm Scirocco winds, but once again consistency is low (50 days/yr) and long summer flat spells of weeks are not uncommon. Autumn to Spring is the best bet.

Way down south, Calabria and Sicily are perfectly exposed to African weather fronts and offer (to the very few locals) some of the sweetest left points in the Mediterranean. They rely on the less frequent, harder to forecast SE wind, which only hits this corner of the Med on about 50 days of the year. The north coast of Sicily does pick up NW swells and the biggest scene is around Palermo at Il Moletto.

Adriatic Sea

Eastern Italy’s coast on the shallow Adriatic, is the least consistent surf area yet it remains quite densely surfed. The few decent spots around Ravenna and Ancona attract surfers by the hundreds during the rare SE swells and frequent NE storms. This area can rely on 60-100 surfable days/year but this count includes also the many gutless NE windswell days. There are slow and easy righthand points in Marche and Abruzzo that continue to break in strong onshore winds. Puglia and Molise offers more challenging reefs in NE to SE swells with fewer people in the water. The Adriatic can have waves in summer when the descent of cold air currents from the former Soviet block triggers a gusty E to NE wind producing poor quality surf for many east coast spots. Otherwise it’s those tricky SE and E windswells that can appear from autumn to spring but remember water temps can drop to 7ºC from the summer bath-like comfort of 30ºC.