Current time in Rome, Italy
The current local time in Rome is shown below. Rome observes CET in winter and CEST during daylight saving time.
Daylight saving time
Sunrise & sunset today
Timezone facts
Rome in context
Rome lies on the lower Tiber River about 25 kilometres inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea, the capital of Italy and of the Lazio region. The historic core, enclosed within the Aurelian Walls and built around the seven hills of antiquity, occupies a tiny fraction of the modern municipality, which extends to around 1,287 square kilometres and ranks among the largest city limits of any major European capital. Population stands at around 2.8 million in the municipality and 4.3 million in the wider metropolitan area.
Timezone history of Rome
Italy adopted Central European Time in 1893 as part of the same wave of European timezone standardisation that brought Germany and several other countries onto the 15-degree-east meridian. The Vatican City state, an independent country geographically inside Rome, shares Italian time and the EU's DST schedule despite not being an EU member. Italy was among the first three European countries to introduce daylight saving, in 1916 during the First World War, suspending and reintroducing it several times before the EU harmonised practice in the 1970s.
Working hours in Rome
Rome working hours are typically 09:00 to 18:00 with a midday break of an hour or more, often taken in a trattoria near the office rather than at the desk. The August closure for ferragosto, the mid-August public holiday on the 15th, extends in practice for two to three weeks either side, when the city's smaller businesses and many restaurants shut and the population departs for the coast or mountains. Espresso punctuates the working day; the standing one-euro shot at a bar takes seconds.