Anywhere Italy

Spopolamento · the emptying

128 of our towns lost 8 per cent or more of their people in six years

963 towns measured · 375 lost 5% or more · 128 lost 8% or more · 15 regions · ISTAT 2018 → 2023

Riace

Riace, Calabria: 2,313 residents in 2018, 1,694 in 2023, −26.8%

Italy has been leaving its interior for seventy years. The census counts it every decade and the number only goes one way: the hill and mountain communes lose people, the coast and the plain gain them, and the towns that were built for a thousand are kept going by a hundred. The state has a name for the places furthest from a hospital, a school and a station, aree interne, and a policy for them, and most of the towns below carry that label.

Small is not the same as emptying, and this page measures the second thing. A village of a hundred people with a fortress and a coach park is doing fine; a town of two thousand that has lost one in five of them since 2018 is not. So the roster below is not the smallest towns in the catalogue, it is the ones losing people fastest: every town for which we have ISTAT resident counts for both 2018 and 2023, and which lost 8 per cent or more between the two. Riace leads it, at −26.8%. Between them these 128 towns lost 28,762 residents in six years.

Six years is a short window and a rate is not a fate; a town can turn. Some have, and they are named at the end. But the arithmetic of a place losing two per cent a year is simple: one family leaving is a class closing, one shop closing is the last shop. The way to help is not complicated. Go. Stay a night rather than driving through. Buy the cheese from the one person who makes it. A town of eight hundred notices twenty visitors in a way a city never will. See them while they are still towns.

The 128, fastest loss first

On each card: the change 2018 → 2023 and the two counts behind it. Resident counts are ISTAT’s, read from Wikidata for the 963 towns where both years exist and cleaned of obvious errors and mergers; a hamlet inside a larger commune carries the commune’s figure and is left out. Wikidata is edited by hand, so if a figure for a town you know looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against ISTAT directly. Type a name, a province or a region to narrow it.

128 towns

And the ones coming back

The counter-examples: catalogue towns that GAINED 3 per cent or more over the same years. Not all of it is people moving to the mountains; some is a lake shore or a ski valley filling up. But it is the direction the whole list could go.

The Sunday letter

The 1,000 Italian towns most travelers skip.

Every Sunday we send one letter. The week's town, what is worth eating there, and when to turn up. It is free, and you can leave whenever you like.

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