Central Italy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Country | Italy |
| Regions | |
| Area | |
• Total | 58,052 km2 (22,414 sq mi) |
| Population (2025)[1] | |
• Total | 11,704,312 |
| • Density | 201.62/km2 (522.19/sq mi) |
| Languages | |
| – Official language | Italian |
| – Other common languages | |
Central Italy (Italian:Italia centrale orCentro Italia) is one of the five official statistical regions ofItaly used by theItalian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), a first-level NUTS region with code ITI, and aEuropean Parliament constituency. As of 2025, it has over 11 million inhabitants.
Central Italy encompasses four of Italy's twentyregions, includingLazio,Marche,Tuscany, andUmbria. The easternmost and southernmost parts of Lazio (Cittaducale,Amatrice,Sora,Cassino,Isola del Liri,Sperlonga,Fondi,Gaeta, andFormia districts, as well as the islands ofPonza andVentotene) are sometimes connected to southern Italy (theMezzogiorno) for cultural and historical reasons since they were once part of theKingdom of the Two Sicilies, andsouthern Italian dialects are spoken. As a geographical region, central Italy may also include the regions ofAbruzzo andMolise,[2][3][4] which are otherwise considered part of Southern Italy for sociocultural, linguistic, and historical reasons.
Central Italy is crossed by the northern and centralApennines and is washed by theAdriatic Sea to the east, by theTyrrhenian Sea and theLigurian Sea to the west. The main rivers of this portion of the territory are theArno and theTiber with their tributaries (e.g.Aniene), and theLiri-Garigliano. The most important lakes areLake Trasimeno,Lake Montedoglio,Lake Bolsena,Lake Bracciano,Lake Vico,Lake Albano, andLake Nemi. From an altimetric point of view, central Italy has a predominantly hilly territory (68.9%). The mountainous and flat areas are equivalent to 26.9% and 4.2% of the territorial distribution respectively.
For centuries before theunification of Italy, which occurred in 1861, central Italy was divided into two states: thePapal States and theGrand Duchy of Tuscany.
ThePapal States, officially the State of the Church, were a series of territories in theItalian Peninsula under the directsovereign rule of thepope from 756 until 1870.[5] They were among the majorstates of Italy from the 8th century until theunification of Italy, between 1859 and 1870. The state had its origins in the rise ofChristianity throughout Italy and, with it, the rising influence of theChristian Church. By the mid-8th century, with the decline of theByzantine Empire in Italy, the papacy became effectively sovereign. Several Christian rulers, including Frankish kingsCharlemagne andPepin the Short, donated further lands to be governed by the Church.[5]
During theRenaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly, and the Pope became one of Italy's most important secular rulers as well as the head of the Church. At their zenith, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions ofLazio, which includesRome;Marche;Umbria;Romagna; and portions ofEmilia. Those holdings were considered to be a manifestation of thetemporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy. By 1861, much of the Papal States' territory had been conquered by theKingdom of Italy. Only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the pope's temporal control. In 1870, the pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all except theLeonine City of Rome, which the new Italian state did not occupy militarily despite its annexation of Lazio. In 1929, theItalian fascist leaderBenito Mussolini, the head of the Italian government, ended the "Prisoner in the Vatican" problem involving a unified Italy and theHoly See by negotiating theLateran Treaty, signed by the two parties. The treaty recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See over a newly created international territorial entity, a city-state within Rome limited to a token territory that became theVatican City.
TheGrand Duchy of Tuscany was an Italianmonarchy that existed, with interruptions, from 1569 to 1860 and replaced theRepublic of Florence.[6] The grand duchy's capital wasFlorence. In the 19th century, the population of the grand duchy was about 1,815,000 inhabitants.[7] Having brought nearly allTuscany under his control after he had conquered theRepublic of Siena,Cosimo I de' Medici was elevated by apapal bull ofPope Pius V to Grand Duke of Tuscany on 27 August 1569.[8][9] The Grand Duchy was ruled by theHouse of Medici until the extinction of its senior branch in 1737. While not as internationally renowned as the old republic, the Grand Duchy thrived under the Medici and bore witness to unprecedented economic and military success underCosimo I and his sons until the reign ofFerdinando II, which saw the beginning of the state's long economic decline, peaking underCosimo III.[10]
Francis Stephen of Lorraine, acognatic descendant of the Medici, succeeded the family and ascended the throne of his Medicean ancestors. Tuscany was governed by a viceroy,Marc de Beauvau-Craon, for his entire rule. His descendants ruled and resided in the Grand Duchy until its end in 1859, barring one interruption, whenNapoleon Bonaparte gave Tuscany to theHouse of Bourbon-Parma (Kingdom of Etruria, 1801–1807) and later annexed it directly to theFirst French Empire. After the collapse of the Napoleon in 1814, the Grand Duchy was restored. TheUnited Provinces of Central Italy, a client state of theKingdom of Sardinia, annexed Tuscany in 1859. Tuscany was formally annexed to Sardinia in 1860 as part of the unification of Italy after a landslide referendum in which 95% of voters approved.[11][12]
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
|---|---|---|
| 1871 | 4,733,272 | — |
| 1881 | 4,913,385 | +3.8% |
| 1901 | 5,756,662 | +17.2% |
| 1911 | 6,199,206 | +7.7% |
| 1921 | 6,665,167 | +7.5% |
| 1931 | 7,198,160 | +8.0% |
| 1936 | 7,633,552 | +6.0% |
| 1951 | 8,633,879 | +13.1% |
| 1961 | 9,361,244 | +8.4% |
| 1971 | 10,278,806 | +9.8% |
| 1981 | 10,783,100 | +4.9% |
| 1991 | 10,892,024 | +1.0% |
| 2001 | 10,886,776 | −0.0% |
| 2011 | 11,598,055 | +6.5% |
| 2021 | 11,724,035 | +1.1% |
| Source:ISTAT[13][14] | ||
Central Italy has 11,704,312 inhabitants as of 2025.[1]
| Region | Capital | Inhabitants | Area (km²) | Density (inh/km²) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Lazio | Rome | 5,710,272 | 17,242 | 331 |
 Marche | Ancona | 1,481,252 | 9,366 | 158 |
 Toscana | Florence | 3,660,834 | 22,985 | 159 |
 Umbria | Perugia | 851,954 | 8,456 | 100 |
.jpg)
Below is the list of the most populous municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants.[citation needed]
| No. | Municipality | Region | Inhabitants |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rome | Lazio | 2,746,984 |
| 2 | Florence | Toscana | 362,353 |
| 3 | Prato | Toscana | 198,326 |
| 4 | Perugia | Umbria | 162,467 |
| 5 | Livorno | Toscana | 152,916 |
| 6 | Latina | Lazio | 127,732 |
| 7 | Terni | Umbria | 106,411 |
| 8 | Ancona | Marche | 99,469 |
| 9 | Arezzo | Toscana | 96,527 |
| 10 | Pesaro | Marche | 95,360 |
| 11 | Pisa | Toscana | 89,450 |
| 12 | Guidonia Montecelio | Lazio | 89,165 |
| 13 | Pistoia | Toscana | 88,943 |
| 14 | Lucca | Toscana | 88,614 |
| 15 | Fiumicino | Lazio | 83,075 |
| 16 | Grosseto | Toscana | 81,412 |
| 17 | Aprilia | Lazio | 74,615 |
| 18 | Viterbo | Lazio | 66,365 |
| 19 | Massa | Toscana | 65,801 |
| 20 | Pomezia | Lazio | 64,994 |
| 21 | Viareggio | Toscana | 60,697 |
| 22 | Fano | Marche | 59,907 |
| 23 | Anzio | Lazio | 59,793 |
| 24 | Carrara | Toscana | 59,699 |
| 25 | Foligno | Umbria | 55,310 |
| 26 | Tivoli | Lazio | 55,107 |
| 27 | Siena | Toscana | 52,991 |
| 28 | Velletri | Lazio | 52,872 |
| 29 | Civitavecchia | Lazio | 51,639 |
| 30 | Ardea | Lazio | 50,781 |
Central Italy is dominated byCentral Italian and theTuscan dialect. Other languages spoken are Gallo-Piceno ("Gallo-Italic Marche" or "Gaul-Marche"), aGallo-Italic language spoken in theProvince of Pesaro and Urbino and in the northern part of theprovince of Ancona,Marche region,[15] andNeapolitan, spoken in southernLazio and in southernMarche as well as eastern fringes ofUmbria. Central Italian refers to the dialects ofItalo-Romance spoken in theArea Mediana, which covers a swathe of central Italy.Area Mediana is also used in a narrower sense to describe the southern part in which case the northern one may be referred to as theArea Perimediana, a distinction that will be made throughout this article. The two areas are divided along a line running approximately fromRome in the southwest toAncona in the northeast.[16]
In the Early Middle Ages, Central Italian extended north intoRomagna and covered all of modern-dayLazio,Abruzzo, andMolise. Since then, the dialects spoken in those areas have been assimilated intoGallo-Italic andSouthern Italo-Romance respectively.[17] In addition, thedialect of Rome has undergone considerable Tuscanization from the fifteenth century onwards, such that it has lost many of its central Italian features.[18][19]
Tuscan dialect is a set ofItalo-Dalmatianvarieties ofRomance spoken inTuscany,Corsica, andSardinia.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on itsFlorentine dialect, and it became the language of culture throughout Italy[20] because of the prestige of the works byDante Alighieri,Petrarch,Giovanni Boccaccio,Niccolò Machiavelli, andFrancesco Guicciardini. It would later become the official language of allItalian states and of theKingdom of Italy when it was formed.Corsican on the island ofCorsica and the Corso-Sardinian transitional varieties spoken in northernSardinia (Gallurese andSassarese) are classified by scholars as a direct offshoot from medieval Tuscan,[21] even though they now constitute a distinct linguistic group.
Together with the borderingEmilia-Romagna of northeastern Italy, the central Italian regions ofMarche,Tuscany, andUmbria are historically considered to be the most left-leaning regions in Italy and together are known as the "Red Zone" (la zona rossa);[22] they are also referred to as the "Red Belt",[23][24][25] and have been compared to similar "Red Zones" in France and Finland, where Western Europeancommunism achieved its greatest success.[26]
Known in Italian asregioni rosse (red regions), the "Red Belt" has been compared to the "Red Wall" in British politics. As with the "Red Wall" in Britain, the "Red Belt" regions were put under comparable pressure byright-wing populists in the late 2010s and early 2020s, particularly by theLeague ofMatteo Salvini;[27][28][29] even before the rise of Salvini, when it was still known as theNorthern League, it had improved results by the early 2010s.[30] In 2019, thecentre-left coalition lost Umbria to thecentre-right coalition but won it back in 2024; in 2020, the centre-left coalition also lost Marche, and failed to win it back in 2025. Alongside Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany proved to be the most reliable region of the "Red Belt", maintaining in 2025 its 150-year old left-leaning trend.[31]
Thegross domestic product (GDP) of the region was €380.9 billion in 2018, accounting for 21.6% of Italy's economic output. TheGDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was €31,500, or 105% of the EU27 average the same year.[32]
 | This sectioncontainspromotional content. Please helpimprove it by removingpromotional language and inappropriateexternal links, and by adding encyclopedic text written from aneutral point of view.(May 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The regions of central Italy were exposed to different historical influences because of the peoples that settled there, such as theCelts, theEtruscans, theNorth Picenes, theSouth Picene, theUmbri, theLatins, theRomans, theByzantines, and theLombards. Some of its woodlands and mountains are preserved in severalNational Parks; a major example is theAbruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park, located inAbruzzo, with smaller parts inLazio andMolise. It is the oldest in theApennine Mountains and the second-oldest in Italy, with an important role in the preservation of endemic species such as theItalian wolf,Abruzzo chamois andMarsican brown bear.[citation needed]
Central Italy has many major tourist attractions, many of which are protected byUNESCO. Central Italy is possibly the most visited in Italy and contains many popular attractions as well as sought-after landscapes.Rome boasts the remaining wonders of theRoman Empire and some of the world's best-known landmarks, such as theColosseum.Florence, regarded as the birthplace of theItalian Renaissance, isTuscany's most visited city, and nearby cities likeSiena,Pisa,Arezzo, andLucca also have rich cultural heritage.Umbria's population is small but has many important cities such asPerugia andAssisi. For similar reasons, Lazio and Tuscany are some of Italy's most visited regions and the main targets forEcotourism. The area is known for its picturesque landscapes and attracts tourists from all over the world, including Italy itself. Pristine landscapes serve as one of the primary motivators for tourists to visit central Italy, although there are others, such as a rich history of art.[citation needed]
Roman cuisine comes from the Italian city ofRome. It features fresh, seasonal, and simply prepared ingredients from theRoman Campagna.[33] Then includepeas, globeartichokes andfava beans, shellfish, milk-fed lamb andgoat, and cheeses such aspecorino romano andricotta.[34]Olive oil is used mostly to dress raw vegetables, andstrutto (porklard) and fat fromprosciutto are preferred for frying.[33] The most popular sweets in Rome are small individual pastries calledpasticcini,gelato and handmade chocolates and candies.[35] Special dishes are often reserved for different days of the week; for example,gnocchi is eaten on Thursdays,baccalà (salted cod) on Fridays, andtrippa on Saturdays.[citation needed]
| International | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
42°18′35″N13°14′58″E / 42.3097°N 13.2494°E /42.3097; 13.2494
