Where to go in March, between the last snow and the first warmth

March is the hinge of the travelling year. On one side of it, the north is still deep in snow but suddenly flooded with light; on the other, the old lands around the Mediterranean are green after the winter rains and comfortably cool for walking round ruins. Neither half of that picture lasts: by May the Arctic snow is turning to slush and the ruins are shimmering in the heat. For a few weeks, you can have the best of both.

The Arctic, with the lights on

Late winter is a very good time to go north. The polar night is long gone, the days are lengthening at a remarkable rate, and the snow that fell all winter is still lying deep on the mountains. The nights, meanwhile, are still dark enough for the aurora. Some researchers have noticed that the weeks around the equinoxes tend to bring a little more geomagnetic activity than midwinter, which is a small statistical nudge in your favour, and not a promise.

Ambassador's fifteen-night Arctic Adventures & Northern Lights Explorer sails from Tilbury in March and goes well inside the Arctic Circle: Trondheim first, then Tromsø, Alta, Harstad and Narvik, coming home by way of Åndalsnes and the Romsdalsfjord. Alta is worth knowing about before you arrive. Its rock carvings, thousands of figures of reindeer, boats, bears and hunters cut into the shoreline rocks over several millennia, are on UNESCO's World Heritage List, and they are a reminder that people have been making a living at the top of Europe for a very long time.

If you would rather be on land, Explore's short Finnish Lapland Winter Adventure runs in March around Inari and Ivalo, in the far north of Finland. Inari sits on the huge lake of the same name and is the centre of Sámi culture in Finland; the landscape round about is forest, frozen water and very little else, which is entirely the point. Five nights is short, but in March the days are long enough to be out in the snow for most of them.

Southern Italy, before the season

At the other end of Europe, the Bay of Naples in March is cool and often bright, with the tourist season still some weeks away. This matters more here than almost anywhere, because the sites are among the most visited in the world and the summer heat on the unshaded streets of Pompeii is punishing.

Travelsphere's week in March is a proper antiquarian's itinerary. It begins at Pozzuoli, Baia and Cumae, on the volcanic Phlegraean Fields west of Naples: Baia was the Romans' favourite seaside resort, much of it now under water, and Cumae was one of the first Greek colonies on the Italian mainland. Then come Pompeii, the Greek temples of Paestum, which are among the best preserved anywhere, and finally Oplontis and Herculaneum. Herculaneum, buried deeper than Pompeii in the eruption of AD 79, kept things its neighbour lost, including carbonised wooden furniture and roof beams. The last two days are spent at leisure in Minori, on the Amalfi coast.

Petra in the spring

Jordan is at its best in spring and autumn, and March is a very good month: the desert days are warm rather than fierce, the nights are cold, and after the winter rain there can be a faint green over the hills that would astonish anyone who has seen them in August.

Petra, the rose-red city of the Nabataeans, is the reason most people go, and the reason is sound. It was the capital of a trading kingdom that grew rich on the incense routes two thousand years ago, and its tombs and temples are carved straight into the cliffs. Europeans knew nothing of it until the Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, disguised as a pilgrim, talked his way in in 1812. Travelsphere's week-long Jordan's Ancient Wonders also takes in the Roman city of Jerash, Mount Nebo and Madaba with its sixth-century mosaic map of the Holy Land, the crusader castle at Shobak, Little Petra, the desert of Wadi Rum and, to finish, the Dead Sea, the lowest point on dry land on earth. Floating in it is compulsory and faintly ridiculous, and you will do it anyway.

Choosing your March

The simplest rule: if you have never seen deep snow under a clear Arctic sky, go north, because March gives you the snow and the daylight together. If you are more drawn by history than by weather, go south now, while the sites are quiet and the walking is easy. Either way, you will have travelled at the right moment, which is most of the art.