Guides
Days of the week and months in Italian
The calendar words for making plans, reading opening hours, and booking — with the small grammar rules that matter.
Calendar words are practical vocabulary: you meet them in opening hours, tickets, and any plan you make. They are also easy, because there are only nineteen of them and most look close to English or French. Learn them as two short lists and attach them to real situations.
The days: lunedì, martedì, mercoledì, giovedì, venerdì, sabato, domenica. Note the stress falls on the final “ì” for the weekdays. In Italy the week starts on Monday, so a calendar or a “closed on…” sign lists lunedì first — useful to remember when reading opening hours.
The months: gennaio, febbraio, marzo, aprile, maggio, giugno, luglio, agosto, settembre, ottobre, novembre, dicembre. They are not capitalised in Italian, unlike English. Neither are the days. It looks odd at first but it is correct.
A couple of grammar notes make them usable. “Il” before a day means “every” that day: “il lunedì” = “on Mondays”. Without the article, a bare day means this coming one: “Ci vediamo lunedì” = “See you Monday”. For a date, the pattern is “il” + number + month: “il tre marzo”, with the exception of the first, “il primo marzo”.
Practise by saying today, tomorrow (domani), and yesterday (ieri), then reading a real Italian opening-hours sign. The words stick faster when you use them to answer a genuine question — when is it open, when shall we meet — than when you recite the list.
- Weekday stress is on the final syllable; the week starts on Monday.
- Days and months are not capitalised in Italian.
- “il lunedì” means “on Mondays”; a bare “lunedì” means this coming Monday.