[This Article originally featured in The Green Travel Guide. For the full article visit here.]
Early last summer I spent time in Athens staying next to the ruins of Hadrian’s Library and the Roman Agora. The heat was brutal. Intense 40C+ heatwave days. We would rise at dawn, venture out early, then spend most of the day indoors in air-conditioned rooms, until night would fall and the city would come alive — evenings spent eating al fresco, browsing in bookshops open until midnight, watching open-air films in cinemas beneath a canopy of stars, late-night chats on the steps of Plaka’s labyrinthine alleyways. We had planned to travel along the Attica coast, to Cape Sounion and the Temple of Poseidon. On the morning of travel, I received a text alert (in Greek and English) — a warning of a fire nearby, the message telling us to get indoors. Everyone around me in the street received the same message – all the phones beeping in unison, yet few moved to seek cover.
This is the new southern European ‘normal’ in the summer months. Wildfires have become a constant rather than an exception — and they are becoming more dangerous.
Living in the Mediterranean, we operate on high alert through the warmer months, especially on those searingly hot days when the wind rises. One of our friends is a fire-fighter here in the Balearics. So much work is preventative — clearing out riverbeds full of dry leaves, clearing brush on the mountainsides before the heat hits and education work to remind locals, hikers and tourists alike to be careful and mindful. Visitors underestimate the heat constantly. The island, Mallorca, is on drought-alert. Tourists often fail to consider issues like water supply when they stay somewhere yet there are villages on the island that have their supply cut or rationed.
There is the reality and then the holiday brochure.
We yearn for that quintessential Mediterranean summer – slow days by the sea, fresh food and long lazy sun-dappled lunches, hammock siestas, warm evenings and late nights. The sounds of cicadas, the scent of night jasmine, the glimmer of sunshine on the water. Instagram curates an endless series of perfect getaways – Corsica, Sardinia, the Greek islands, Sicily – all beautiful and enticing.
Yet this month alone there have been wildfires raging in Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected. Homes and lives lost, livelihoods destroyed. Newspaper headlines read like a disaster movie: “thousands forced to flee” (Al Jazeera), “We’re being cooked alive” (CNN), “Wildfires rage across southern Europe” (BBC).
Friends had travelled to the south of France earlier in the summer, camping on the coast, only to report watching the sky turn rising orange and black, and beating a hasty retreat to a safer area. Both France and Spain have issued rarer red weather warnings as temperatures climb over 40C. Red heat alerts are in place across 10 major Italian cities including Rome, Florence and Milan. Many people have chosen to rethink their summer med plans.
So what is happening to the Mediterranean summer? Is it already a relic of tourism past? Will it become the Mediterranean spring instead, with travel patterns shifting accordingly?
I have been writing a lot recently about Coolcations – the travel trend based on retreating to cooler, northern climes in search of respite from the crushing summer heat. And I’m sharing some cooler destinations in the destination guide this week.
But this is not a problem we can ultimately outrun through booking travel elsewhere.
For another book project I’m working on, I’ve been interviewing glacial archaeologists in Norway, Italy and other countries about their discoveries as the glaciers melt and retreat — it is sobering research. Both landscape and climate is changing fast.
With over 2.4 million acres burnt across southern Europe as of mid-August 2025 (according to the European Forest Fire Information System), this year is sizing up to potentially be the worst wildfire year on record. The scale of impact on nature, biodiversity, on lives and families uprooted, on livelihoods lost, is hard to imagine.
The rising temperatures are only set to continue — we have only to look to places like the Middle East where temperatures of 50C+ are becoming more common in the summer months. Wildfires are a problem in many parts of the world — from California to Brazil to Australia.
Can Europe learn from other parts of the world? How we adapt, and how quickly, remains to be seen.
What is clear, is that travel, and how we move around our planet is being reshaped rapidly.
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