January and February are tourism’s dry gulches. Prices drop post-Christmas, not much but enough. Overall the weather isn’t that bad. You can get rain and cold, particularly in the north (for that matter you can cold and rainy spells in April, only they’re more expensive, so to speak). Rome, Florence, and particularly Venice (coldest of the three) are in fact best explored in late January and early February. Pre-carnival you get an available Venice. A foggy Venice day in late January could give you all of Venice’s St. Mark’s Square to yourself. Romans dislike the cold and that also means getting more of the city to yourself on cold days (try the Pantheon at Midnight on chilly February night). Even St. Peter’s Square empties out. A word on Florence: It’s can sometimes be a bit like Denver, with tremendous temperature gaps. It’s the hardest of the big three to nail down.