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Best places to live in Italy with every factor weighted equally
The ranking at the top of this page starts with all 14 factors at the same weight. On that footing, these 15 of the 151 places score highest; the number beside each is its match score out of 100. Treat the list as a starting point, not a verdict: raise the factors you care about and the order changes. Select a place to open its full breakdown.
- 1(Milan)89Strongest on international community (100), healthcare (100) and long-distance trains (100). Weakest on housing cost (0). International community: 19.7% of residents are foreign nationals (Italian average 9.4%).
- 2(Turin)86Strongest on restaurants and bars (100), cultural scene (100) and walkability (100). Weakest on housing cost (18). Restaurants and bars: the average resident has 101 restaurants, cafes and bars within 1 km.
- 3(Rome)80Strongest on healthcare (100), long-distance trains (100) and international schools (100). Weakest on housing cost (0). Healthcare: 13,495 hospital beds within 15 km.
- 479Strongest on international community (100), cultural scene (98) and long-distance trains (94). Weakest on international schools (29). International community: 19.4% of residents are foreign nationals (Italian average 9.4%).
- 578Strongest on healthcare (100), restaurants and bars (100) and walkability (100). Weakest on housing cost (0). Healthcare: 13,176 hospital beds within 15 km.
- 677Strongest on cultural scene (100), childcare coverage (99) and restaurants and bars (96). Weakest on housing cost (14). Cultural scene: the average resident has 39.4 museums, theatres, cinemas and galleries within 3 km.
- 777Strongest on long-distance trains (100), restaurants and bars (100) and cultural scene (100). Weakest on housing cost (0). Long-distance trains: 193 long-distance and high-speed departures a day (main station Bologna C.Le). Roma 2 h 04 min, Milano 1 h 04 min, Firenze 37 min, Napoli 3 h 26 min.
- 8(Florence)76Strongest on long-distance trains (100), restaurants and bars (100) and cultural scene (100). Weakest on housing cost (0). Long-distance trains: 116 long-distance and high-speed departures a day (main station Firenze S.Maria Novella). Roma 1 h 30 min, Milano 1 h 48 min, Bologna 37 min, Napoli 2 h 54 min.
- 9(Genoa)76Strongest on restaurants and bars (100), walkability (100) and access to nature (98). Weakest on bike friendliness (26). Restaurants and bars: the average resident has 102 restaurants, cafes and bars within 1 km.
- 1076Strongest on healthcare (100), international schools (96) and airport access (90). Weakest on housing cost (0). Healthcare: 8,698 hospital beds within 15 km.
- 11(Reggio Emilia)76Strongest on long-distance trains (100), international community (98) and bike friendliness (95). Weakest on international schools (46). Long-distance trains: 89 long-distance and high-speed departures a day (main station Reggio Emilia Av). Roma 2 h 45 min, Milano 50 min, Bologna 28 min, Firenze 1 h 08 min, Napoli 4 h 12 min.
- 1275Strongest on international community (100), healthcare (100) and walkability (100). Weakest on housing cost (26). International community: 22.8% of residents are foreign nationals (Italian average 9.4%).
- 1373Strongest on airport access (100), walkability (97) and restaurants and bars (76). Weakest on housing cost (44). Airport access: 9 min by public transport to Milano Malpensa.
- 1473Strongest on airport access (99), international community (90) and walkability (87). Weakest on childcare coverage (47). Airport access: 14 min by public transport to Milano Malpensa.
- 1573Strongest on cultural scene (97), childcare coverage (95) and restaurants and bars (89). Weakest on international schools (29). Cultural scene: the average resident has 36.2 museums, theatres, cinemas and galleries within 3 km.
Best places in Italy by priority
Each starting point is a preset in the tool above. It raises the factors named and lowers a few others. The five highest-scoring places under each:
Family raises safety and international schools to 5, and access to nature, healthcare and childcare coverage to 4.
- Cinisello Balsamo, Lombardia: 87
- Milano (Milan), Lombardia: 87
- Roma (Rome), Lazio: 86
- Monza, Lombardia: 83
- Sesto San Giovanni, Lombardia: 82
Budget first raises housing cost to 5, and safety, bike friendliness, healthcare, long-distance trains, public transit and walkability to 4.
- Brescia, Lombardia: 76
- Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol: 76
- Pescara, Abruzzo: 75
- Reggio nell'Emilia (Reggio Emilia), Emilia-Romagna: 75
- Torino (Turin), Piemonte: 74
Car-free raises bike friendliness, public transit and walkability to 5, and long-distance trains to 4.
- Milano (Milan), Lombardia: 95
- Torino (Turin), Piemonte: 93
- Brescia, Lombardia: 90
- Bergamo, Lombardia: 86
- Sesto San Giovanni, Lombardia: 86
Frequent flyer raises long-distance trains and airport access to 5, and international community, restaurants and bars and cultural scene to 4.
- Milano (Milan), Lombardia: 100
- Torino (Turin), Piemonte: 95
- Roma (Rome), Lazio: 92
- Brescia, Lombardia: 88
- Firenze (Florence), Toscana: 88
Questions about where to live in Italy
What is the best place to live in Italy?
It depends on what you need from a place, which is why the Italy City Finder re-ranks as you set your priorities. With all 14 factors weighted equally, Milano (Milan), Torino (Turin) and Roma (Rome) score highest of the 151 places compared. Change the starting point and the answer changes: Family puts Cinisello Balsamo and Milano (Milan) level at the top, Budget first puts Brescia and Trento level at the top, Car-free puts Milano (Milan) first and Frequent flyer puts Milano (Milan) first.
What are the best places to live in Italy for families?
The Family starting point raises safety and international schools to 5, and access to nature, healthcare and childcare coverage to 4. With it, Cinisello Balsamo, Milano (Milan), Roma (Rome), Monza and Sesto San Giovanni score highest.
Which places in Italy are easiest to live in without a car?
The Car-free starting point raises bike friendliness, public transit and walkability to 5, and long-distance trains to 4. With it, Milano (Milan), Torino (Turin), Brescia, Bergamo and Sesto San Giovanni score highest.
Where is housing most affordable in Italy?
8 places share the top score on the housing cost factor. The largest of them are Marsala, Corigliano-Rossano, Ragusa, Gela and Vittoria. Marsala: average rent €3.16 per m² a month on registered leases, 2025.
Which places in Italy score highest for safety?
On the safety factor, the highest scores go to Quartu Sant'Elena, Brindisi, Andria, Lamezia Terme and Bagheria. Quartu Sant'Elena: 82 violent crimes and 67 home burglaries per 100,000 residents (Italian average 176 and 264). Figure for the province of Cagliari without its capital: ISTAT publishes no figure for this comune. The safety score is built from official crime figures. A low score means more recorded crime than other places on this list, not that a place is unsafe; How the scores work explains the measure.
Where does the data come from?
The Italy City Finder compares 151 places on 14 factors using official statistics and open data. The figure behind every score is shown beside it, and each source is listed under How the scores work and at the foot of this page. The methodology sets out how every city finder turns figures into scores.
Does the City Finder tell me whether I can move to Italy?
No. It is an informational research tool that compares places using general statistics. It does not assess eligibility for any visa, residence permit or citizenship, and nothing in it is legal, immigration, tax or financial advice. Karte Global publishes general information on Italian citizenship by descent. For visa and residence routes, see Move Me To EU.
About the Italy City Finder
The Italy City Finder compares 151 places across Italy on 14 factors: housing cost, safety, bike friendliness, access to nature, international community, healthcare, long-distance trains, airport access, public transit, restaurants and bars, cultural scene, walkability, international schools and childcare coverage. Every factor starts at the same weight. Raise the ones you care about, lower or switch off the ones you don't, and the ranking and map re-sort as you go. You can shortlist places, compare them side by side, and copy a link that reopens your exact setup. Roma, Milano, Napoli, Torino, Palermo, Bologna and Firenze open up into their neighborhoods.
It is built for Americans weighing a move to Italy, whether through citizenship by descent, a visa or another route, who want to turn a long list of places into a shortlist worth visiting. Roma (Rome), Milano (Milan) and Napoli (Naples) are on the list, and so are smaller places that rarely make the usual rankings. Scores are built from official statistics and open data, the figure behind each score is shown next to it, and the sources are listed at the foot of this page. The methodology explains how a figure becomes a score.
If a parent or grandparent was Italian, see whether you may qualify through Italian citizenship by descent. For visa and residence routes, see Move Me To EU, Karte Global's visa and relocation practice. Considering more than one country? Browse every city finder, or compare places across the whole EU on one scale in the EU City Finder.
How the scores work
Each figure is turned into a 0 to 100 score. Most factors are scored half by comparison and half on a fixed scale. The comparison half ranks the places against each other: the weakest twentieth score 0 and the strongest twentieth score 100. The fixed half measures each place from zero up to the level of the strongest, so a city is not marked zero merely for coming last on a list of good options. Housing cost and journey times have no natural zero and are scored by comparison only. Public transit is already a percentage of residents and is used as it stands, and cycling is scored on a fixed scale (see the table). Safety has its own scale, described below and in the table.
Cities are compared with the other cities on this list. Neighborhoods are compared only with other neighborhoods of the same city, so a neighborhood score of 80 in Bologna and 80 in Roma are not the same thing. A score is a comparison, not a grade, and the figure behind every score is shown next to it.
Your overall match is not a flat average. Weights are squared, so a factor at 5 counts nearly three times as much as one at 3. The result is stretched so that strong matches separate from middling ones. A place that excels on something you rated 4 or 5 earns a small bonus, shown as "strong fit"; one that does badly on it takes a penalty, shown as "weak fit". Where a place has no figure for a factor, that factor is left out of its match and the others carry the weight.
Badges: Measured a published official statistic or survey result. Derived calculated by us from published data. Editorial written or judged by us: only the short descriptive notes, which never affect a score. Planned not in the score yet.
Reading the safety score. Violent crime counts twice as much as home burglary. Half of the score ranks the places on this list against each other, so the places with the most recorded violence and burglary get little for that half however safe they are by international standards. The other half is absolute, on a fixed scale that does not depend on the other places: no recorded violent crime or burglary would score 100, and the Italian average scores 76. A low score means "more recorded crime than other Italian places", not "unsafe". Across Italy the police reported 176 violent crimes and 264 home burglaries per 100,000 residents in 2024. Crime is counted where it happens, so places that draw commuters, visitors and nightlife record more per resident than quieter ones. ISTAT publishes figures only for the provincial capitals and for whole provinces, so every other place on the list carries its province's rate with the capital taken out; that is an average over the province's other towns and villages, not a figure for the place itself. The figure behind each score is shown so you can judge the gap for yourself.
Reading the train and airport figures. Train counts and journey times come from the published timetables for one ordinary Tuesday, 20 October 2026, and airport journeys from the day before, Monday 19 October, the last day the open feeds carry Milano's metro. Engineering works and seasonal changes move these figures, most of all for smaller stations. Italo, the private high-speed operator, does not publish open timetables, so its trains are not counted: cities on the high-speed lines between Torino, Milano, Venezia, Bologna, Firenze, Roma and Napoli have more fast trains than shown. Treat these two factors as a snapshot of this season, and check a route you would rely on. Sardinia has no rail link to the mainland, so its places show no train figure.
Neighborhood view uses each city's own sub-municipal areas as ISTAT records them: Roma's 15 municipi, Milano's 9 municipi, Napoli's 10 municipalità, Torino's 8 and Palermo's 8 circoscrizioni, and the quartieri of Bologna (6) and Firenze (5). It uses only the factors that can be measured inside a city. Housing cost and safety are not scored for neighborhoods: rents and crime are published by comune, not by neighborhood.