Villefranche-sur-Mer weather by month, using Météo-France's own figures

Looking up the weather for Villefranche-sur-Mer comes with a catch that hardly anyone mentions. Météo-France has no station in the village, and plenty of sites give you figures without saying where they come from. I’d rather go to the official source and tell you which one I’m using. The table above is Nice’s, about 10 km away, with the 1991-2020 averages, and I compare it with Cap Ferrat, which sat just across the bay.

Where do these numbers come from?

The Nice station is at the airport, 2 metres above the sea. Its thirty-year averages are the ones Météo-France publishes on its climate sheet, issued in June 2025. Cap Ferrat, at 138 metres in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, is closer to Villefranche, but it stopped recording in 2008 and its temperature series runs from 1981 to 2008.

Side by side, they tell you something useful. Winter nights are milder at Cap Ferrat (a 7.8°C January low against 5.8°C at Nice) and it’s slightly drier over the year. Villefranche sits tucked into its bay between Nice and the cape, so I’d treat the Nice table as a cautious estimate and expect slightly gentler nights.

A quick word on reading the table. A rainy day, in Météo-France’s terms, is one with at least 1 mm, so a passing shower counts the same as a downpour. Nice also averages 28 days of thunder a year, and the busiest months for storms run from August to November, which fits the pattern of short, heavy autumn rain.

A long, dry summer

From June to August it barely rains. July is the driest month, averaging 13.6 mm, and the sunniest, with 349 hours of sunshine. August has the highest average high, 27.9°C, and even so the days above 30°C are few, 3.8 on average in August and 3.4 in July. The station record stands at 37.7°C, set on 1 August 2006.

What matters more to me as a traveller isn’t the heat on the thermometer but the heat on the hill. Villefranche’s old town is climbed on foot and the Moyenne Corniche is a long way up, so in July I’d do the climbing first thing and leave the middle of the day for the beaches in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

When does it rain in Villefranche?

In autumn, and quite a lot. September already climbs to 81 mm, October to 127.9 mm and November reaches 138.4 mm, the wettest month of the year. Almost half of the 791 mm annual total falls between September and December. There aren’t many rainy days (7.5 in October and 8.5 in November), but when it rains, it pours. The station’s wettest single day, 191.4 mm, fell on 13 October 1973.

This is where plenty of visitors get caught out. They see an annual average of 16°C and picture a beach holiday in autumn. The average October high is still 21°C, but I wouldn’t build an October or November trip around outdoor plans alone. With trains to Nice and Monaco roughly every 15 minutes, a wet day is rescued by a museum; in the Principality there’s the Oceanographic Museum, and for moving between the two, see the train and bus from Nice to Monaco.

A mild winter, but not T-shirt weather

From December to February average highs hover around 13 to 14°C and lows around 6°C at Nice. Frost is rare, a little over one day a year, and snow the same. It’s a good time to see the old town and the Cocteau chapel in peace, as long as you bear in mind that several hotels close; the ones that stay open are in hotels in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

What about the sea?

Météo-France doesn’t publish water temperatures on its sheets. The nearest official reference I have comes from the SBM, the company behind Monte-Carlo’s casino and grand hotels, for Monaco, a few villages further along the coast. Its range is 24 to 26 degrees at the height of summer, 20 to 23 in early autumn, around 13 in the depths of winter and over 20 already by May. That’s why September strikes me as the most rewarding month for a swim, with the water still warm and an average high of 24.8°C.

If you’re heading on to the Principality, the IMSEE measures the weather at the Exotic Garden there, with its own official figures. They’re in Monaco weather by month.