The best cities to live in Italy: every provincial capital by liveability

Every provincial capital in Italy gets the same treatment here. We take the liveability index of each of its inhabited census sections, the small areas Istat (the national statistics office) uses for the census, and work out the median weighted by residents: the value of the area where the "middle" resident lives. It is the same number shown on each municipality's page, where a map shows the index area by area.

The index measures the place, not the people. It looks at what you find around your front door: schools, pharmacies and shops within walking distance, stops and lines of public transport, parks and countryside, flood, landslide and earthquake hazard, air quality, noise from railways, motorways and airports, the state of the buildings and broadband speed. How each part is scored and weighted is set out on the liveability index page.

A ranking of everyday life

The quality-of-life tables Italian newspapers publish every year look at the whole province, with economic, social and safety statistics. This one looks at the street outside your door, asking the same question of every city: how well equipped and how safe is the area where most people actually live? That is why the results can differ a lot, and the two rankings read well side by side.

Why some big cities are not at the top

Large cities have more services and transport than anyone, but they also have more traffic noise, worse air and, often, rivers and plains that flood. Small capitals with a compact centre, shops and schools a few minutes away on foot and little natural hazard can score higher.

Natural hazards weigh in a particular way. When floods, landslides or earthquakes come out as critical for an area, its index cannot go above 60, however good everything else is: a home in a place that floods often cannot be "excellent". Several capitals stop exactly at 60, which means that at least half of their residents live in areas scoring 60 or less, usually because of flood-prone land.

A city is not an address

Inside the same city the index can differ by more than thirty points from one neighbourhood to another. Milan shows it well: in our ranking of Milan's neighbourhoods Brera scores 94, while the areas on the eastern edge, between the ring road and Linate airport, are around 60. Each capital in the table links to its page, with the map area by area.

If you are choosing where to live, or buying property in Italy, what counts is the address: type it in the search box and the liveability index of the area is free, with no sign-up. The full report adds the parts behind the number, the hazards on the plot, prices per square metre in the area as a range, services and the questions to ask before you buy. A real example is in the full sample report.