{"slug":"nationalities-in-italy-map","title":"Each nationality has built a different Italy","deck":"We looked at ISTAT’s comune-level data to see where Americans, Britons and Germans actually live in Italy. The answer is much more varied than expected.","author":"Caitlin","published":"2026-08-11","updated":"2026-10-13","status":"published","topics":["places"],"url":"https://www.expatliving.it/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","markdownUrl":"https://www.expatliving.it/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map.md?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","places":[{"grain":"region","code":"umbria","name":"Umbria","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/umbria?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"toscana","name":"Toscana","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/toscana?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"abruzzo","name":"Abruzzo","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/abruzzo?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"015146","name":"Milano","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/milano?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"066048","name":"Introdacqua","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/introdacqua?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"province","code":"PN","name":"Pordenone","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/province/pordenone?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"friuli-venezia-giulia","name":"Friuli-Venezia Giulia","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/friuli-venezia-giulia?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"093008","name":"Budoia","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/budoia?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"069040","name":"Gessopalena","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/gessopalena?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"calabria","name":"Calabria","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/calabria?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"001259","name":"Sauze d'Oulx","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/sauze-d-oulx?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"046002","name":"Bagni di Lucca","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/bagni-di-lucca?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"marche","name":"Marche","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/marche?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"sicilia","name":"Sicilia","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/sicilia?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"province","code":"BZ","name":"Bolzano/Bozen","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/province/bolzano?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"008030","name":"Dolcedo","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/dolcedo?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"liguria","name":"Liguria","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/liguria?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"093004","name":"Aviano","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/aviano?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"}],"datasets":[{"title":"Map layer — Foreign residents by citizenship, by comune","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/foreign-residents-citizenship?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"foreign-residents-citizenship-2025","vintage":"1 January 2025 (history 2019–2024)","coverage":"Comune (7,848 of 7,894) / province / region"}],"body":"A friend who has been thinking about moving to Italy for the past couple of years told us recently that she had more or less settled on [Umbria](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/umbria).\n\nWhy Umbria?\n\nBecause, she said, that was where the Americans were.\n\nShe had not read this anywhere in particular. It was simply an impression she had picked up over time, partly from social media and partly through conversations with friends. Which is probably how most of us form opinions about places we have not yet lived in.\n\nI mention it because we had just finished [building a map that answers](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy) exactly that question.\n\nAnd Umbria is not really where the Americans are.\n\nNeither, perhaps surprisingly, is [Tuscany](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/toscana).\n\nThe highest concentration of American citizens in any reasonably sized Italian _comune_ is actually in a town of fewer than 2,000 people in [Abruzzo](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/abruzzo) that many people outside the region will never have heard of.\n\nWe have been pulling ISTAT’s resident population data down to the level of individual _comuni_, covering twenty-five nationalities, and turning it into something you can actually explore.\n\nThe most interesting finding was not any one town. It was how differently Americans, Britons and Germans have settled across Italy.\n\nThere is remarkably little overlap.\n\n![Chart titled \"Three nationalities, three very different totals\" showing 17,393 US, 25,060 UK and 34,981 German registered residents.](https://jtqwizp3ckmd4xpw.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map/1.png)\n\n### The first thing to know: absolute numbers can be misleading\n\nThe natural starting point is to ask which places have the largest number of foreigners.\n\nThat usually leads you straight to the biggest cities.\n\n[Milano](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/milano?nationality=US), for example, has 1,418 American residents. [Introdacqua](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/introdacqua?nationality=US), a small town in Abruzzo, has just 27.\n\nAt first glance, Milano clearly looks like the larger American community.\n\nBut Milano has more than 1.3 million residents. Those 1,418 Americans account for only 0.10% of the local population, or roughly one in a thousand people.\n\nIn Introdacqua, Americans represent 1.40% of the population, closer to one in seventy.\n\nSo if the question is not simply “where are the most Americans?” but “where would I actually notice an American presence?”, the raw number tells only part of the story.\n\n![Chart comparing Milano (1,418 Americans, 0.10% of population) and Introdacqua (27 Americans, 1.40% of population) to show count vs. share.](https://jtqwizp3ckmd4xpw.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map/2.png)\n\nThat is why we use **share of local population** for most of the analysis that follows.\n\nThere is one practical caveat. We only rank _comuni_ with at least 1,000 residents. In a village of eighty people, one foreign family can suddenly represent 5% of the population and distort the rankings quite quickly.\n\nThe map lets you change that minimum population threshold yourself, and it is worth experimenting with it.\n\n### Americans: the numbers tell two very different stories\n\nISTAT records 17,393 American citizens living in the _comuni_ we track.\n\n![Bar chart of the single densest comune by nationality: Dolcedo (Germany, 3.49%), Sauze d'Oulx (UK, 2.59%), Introdacqua (US, 1.40%).](https://jtqwizp3ckmd4xpw.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map/3.png)\n\nAt first, the American map looks fairly scattered. But one cluster stands out very quickly.\n\nFive of the top nineteen _comuni_ are all in the province of [Pordenone](https://www.expatliving.it/data/province/pordenone), in [Friuli-Venezia Giulia](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/friuli-venezia-giulia): [Budoia](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/budoia?nationality=US), Aviano, Montereale Valcellina, Polcenigo and Cavasso Nuovo.\n\nThey also have something else in common.\n\nThey are all close to Aviano Air Base.\n\nThat matters because the American presence here is not primarily a retirement story. It reflects the long-standing presence of the US Air Force and the military families based around it.\n\nIn other words, one of the strongest concentrations of Americans in Italy has relatively little to do with people independently choosing the area as a place to retire.\n\nThere is another complication. Many military personnel do not appear in the normal resident registry at all because they live in Italy under status-of-forces arrangements.\n\nSo the American presence around Aviano is both more substantial than the registry numbers suggest, and less representative of the typical American retiree.\n\nThat is an important distinction.\n\nStill, if you have a military connection yourself, these towns may be particularly useful. There is already an established infrastructure around American families: English is more commonly spoken, the local services are familiar with American residents, and the area has decades of experience with this community.\n\n### The second American pattern is almost the opposite\n\nOnce you look beyond Pordenone, another pattern begins to emerge.\n\nThis one is older and, in many ways, more personal.\n\nIntrodacqua sits in the Valle Peligna in Abruzzo, not far from Sulmona. Nearby Bugnara also appears high in the rankings. [Gessopalena](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/gessopalena?nationality=US), further east in the province of Chieti, is another. Santa Domenica Talao appears in [Calabria](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/calabria).\n\nThese are regions that sent large numbers of emigrants to the United States during the great Italian migration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.\n\nSome of the Americans returning today are descendants of the people who left.\n\nIn Introdacqua, the number of registered Americans rose from 10 in 2019 to 27 in 2025. That is a 170% increase, although it is important to remember that the starting number was very small.\n\nWe would not draw sweeping conclusions from seventeen people.\n\nBut the same pattern appears in several towns, and it also reflects something we hear regularly from readers: for many Americans, the route into Italy is citizenship by descent, and the destination is the town their family originally came from.\n\nIf that describes you, this may be one of the most useful applications of the map.\n\nLook up your family’s _comune_ and see who else has made the same journey.\n\n### Beyond those clusters, the American presence is quite thin\n\nOnce you account for Aviano and the ancestral-return towns, the rest of the American map becomes much more dispersed.\n\nThere are small clusters around the lakes, including Torno and Moltrasio on Lake Como, Meina on Lake Maggiore and Orta San Giulio nearby.\n\nThere is also the Italy many Americans imagine when they think about moving here: Umbria and southern Tuscany.\n\nPlaces such as Monteleone d’Orvieto, Montone, Baschi and Trequanda do appear.\n\nBut the communities are much smaller than the reputation might suggest.\n\nIn several cases, we are talking about fewer than ten American residents in the entire town.\n\nThat does not make them any less appealing. It simply changes what we mean when we say there is an “American community”.\n\nThere is a difference between a place being popular with Americans and a handful of American households having chosen to live there.\n\n![Table of the top comuni by American and British share of population.](https://jtqwizp3ckmd4xpw.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map/4.png)\n\nThis chart puts that distinction into perspective.\n\nIntrodacqua is the highest-ranked American _comune_ by population share at 1.40%. But even there, Americans still represent a very small part of the local population.\n\n### The British have built a different Italy\n\nBritons are both more numerous and, in some places, more concentrated.\n\nISTAT records 25,060 British residents.\n\nThe highest-ranked British _comune_ is [Sauze d’Oulx](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/sauze-d-oulx?nationality=GB) in Piemonte, where Britons account for 2.59% of the population. It is a ski resort with a long history of British visitors and residents.\n\nThe stronger British clusters appear in three main areas.\n\nOne is the Garfagnana and Lunigiana, in the mountains behind Lucca, where places such as [Bagni di Lucca](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/bagni-di-lucca?nationality=GB) and Bagnone have long-established British links.\n\nBagni di Lucca’s connection goes back well beyond modern expatriate life; it had a resident British community in the nineteenth century.\n\nA second cluster appears in the [Marche](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/marche), including Sant’Angelo in Pontano, San Ginesio and Amandola.\n\nA third appears in inland Abruzzo.\n\nThis is one of the few places where the British and American maps briefly touch.\n\nIntrodacqua and Gessopalena appear in both rankings.\n\nThere is also one interesting southern exception: Cianciana in [Sicily](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/sicilia), where British residents make up just over 1% of the population.\n\n### And the Germans have built another Italy again\n\nGermany is the largest of the three groups, with 34,981 registered residents.\n\nBut the pattern is very different.\n\nTwelve of the top twenty-five German _comuni_ are in Trentino-Alto Adige.\n\nThat needs some context.\n\n[South Tyrol](https://www.expatliving.it/data/province/bolzano) is a German-speaking part of Italy. For a German moving there, the experience is quite different from an American moving to Abruzzo. The language, schools and much of the administrative culture are already familiar.\n\nThat makes this cluster difficult to compare directly with the others.\n\nOutside South Tyrol, however, several patterns are much clearer.\n\nThe highest German concentration is in [Dolcedo](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/dolcedo?nationality=DE), in [Liguria](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/liguria), where Germans account for 3.49% of the population—the highest share we found for any of the three nationalities.\n\nNearby Badalucco and Cipressa also appear strongly.\n\nThere are further clusters around Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore, and another in parts of Tuscany, including the Maremma and Elba.\n\nWhat is striking is that these are not the same Tuscan areas favoured by the British or Americans.\n\nAnd not one _comune_ appears on both the German list and either the British or American lists.\n\n![Table showing each nationality's distinct regional clusters — Americans around Pordenone and Abruzzo, Britons around Sauze d'Oulx and the Marche, Germans around South Tyrol and Liguria.](https://jtqwizp3ckmd4xpw.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map/5.png)\n\nThe contrast becomes especially clear when you compare the densest _comune_ for each nationality: Dolcedo for Germans, Sauze d’Oulx for Britons and Introdacqua for Americans.\n\n### Three nationalities, three different versions of Italy\n\nWhen you put the maps together, the differences become much easier to see.\n\n![Map of Italy with dot markers sized by the American share of population in each province, concentrated around Florence, Rome and Venice.](https://jtqwizp3ckmd4xpw.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map/6.png)\n\nAmericans show up most strongly around the [Aviano](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/aviano?nationality=US) military area, in a handful of ancestral towns in Abruzzo and Calabria, and in small pockets around the lakes and central Italy. [The full ranking is here](https://www.expatliving.it/data/nationality/US).\n\nThe British have stronger concentrations in the Garfagnana and Lunigiana, the Marche, inland Abruzzo and a few long-established destinations such as Sauze d’Oulx.\n\nThe German pattern is heavily influenced by German-speaking South Tyrol, but also extends through Liguria, the northern lakes and parts of coastal and southern Tuscany.\n\nNot one _comune_ appears in all three top-twenty-five lists.\n\nPerhaps that should not be surprising.\n\nPeople do not simply choose “Italy”. They choose particular versions of Italy, shaped by language, family history, accessibility, employment, previous migration and the communities that came before them.\n\n### How to use the data yourself\n\nEverything in this article comes from [the map](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy), and you can explore the same information for any of the forty-one nationalities we currently track.\n\nThe simplest approach is to choose a nationality and switch the metric from **count** to **share of population**.\n\nKeep the minimum population threshold at 1,000 to start with, then click through to the individual _comune_ pages for places that interest you.\n\nEach town page shows its nationality breakdown, the trend since 2019 and nearby _comuni_.\n\nThat last part is particularly useful because sometimes the more interesting option is not the town that initially caught your eye, but another one a few kilometres away.\n\nWe have also added two other layers.\n\nOne shows **new residency registrations from abroad**, which gives a better indication of where people are moving now rather than where communities have accumulated over time.\n\nThe second shows **population change between 2019 and 2025**.\n\nThat can matter a great deal if you are considering a small town. A beautiful _comune_ may look very different depending on whether it is slowly growing or steadily losing residents.\n\n### A few important limitations\n\nThere are several things the data does not tell us, and they are worth keeping in mind.\n\n**It measures citizenship, not identity or origin.**\n\nAn American who becomes an Italian citizen through descent is no longer counted as American in the citizenship data, even though socially and culturally they may still think of themselves that way.\n\nThat means the figure of 17,393 Americans almost certainly understates the broader American community in Italy.\n\n**It only includes registered residents.**\n\nPeople living in Italy part of the year, or those who have not registered with the _anagrafe_, will not appear.\n\n**The “foreign residents” figure on the site counts every foreign citizenship ISTAT records.**\n\nThe nationality breakdown covers the forty-one nationalities we track, with the original twenty-five leading every page.\n\n**Small numbers need to be treated carefully.**\n\nA change from five residents to ten is a 100% increase, but it is still only five additional people.\n\nAnd perhaps most importantly:\n\n**The south barely appears in these rankings.**\n\nThe 7% flat-tax regime has attracted considerable attention to smaller towns in Puglia, Calabria, Sicily, Molise and other southern regions.\n\nYet very few of those places currently appear among the strongest concentrations of Americans, Britons or Germans.\n\nThat does not mean the tax regime is not working.\n\nIt may simply be too recent for the demographic effect to appear clearly in data that runs only through 2025.\n\nBut it does suggest that someone moving to a small town in southern Italy for the tax advantages may be arriving relatively early, rather than joining a large existing foreign community.\n\nFor some people, that will be part of the appeal.\n\nFor others, it is useful to know before making the move.\n\n### What should you ask yourself?\n\nThe data raises a few questions that are probably more useful than simply asking where other foreigners live.\n\nAre you looking for a foreign community, or for a particular kind of place?\n\nIf community matters, remember how small many of these groups actually are. Even in the highest-ranked towns, we are often talking about somewhere between five and fifty people.\n\nDoes the existing foreign population resemble you?\n\nA serving American military family around Aviano has a very different experience from a retired couple arriving from Ohio. The same is true of Germans moving into German-speaking South Tyrol.\n\nAnd perhaps the most interesting question is whether you actually want to be somewhere people like you have already settled.\n\nThere are advantages.\n\nAn established foreign community often means somebody has already found the English-speaking notary, the accountant familiar with international tax questions and the doctor who has dealt with foreign residents before.\n\nBut there are trade-offs too.\n\nMore international demand can mean higher prices, and it can also make it easier to remain socially within your own language and community.\n\nNeither is necessarily good or bad.\n\nIt simply depends on the Italy you are looking for.\n\nFinally, think about the town outside the season in which you first fell in love with it.\n\nMany of the places high on these lists are small, and several are seasonal.\n\nA _comune_ in August can feel very different in January.\n\n### A note on the numbers\n\nThe citizenship figures come from ISTAT’s resident population statistics by _comune_ and nationality for 2025, covering twenty-five nationalities and accessed in August 2026.\n\nCountry-of-birth figures come from ISTAT’s 2024 census data and are published only in broad categories, so the two measures are not directly comparable.\n\nThe rankings in this article use share of local population and include the 5,871 Italian _comuni_ with at least 1,000 residents.\n\nThe underlying map and full methodology are available through the data section of Expat Living Italy.\n\nWe would also be very interested to know whether the numbers match what you have seen.\n\nIf you live in one of these towns—or somewhere that does not appear on any of these lists—tell us which _comune_.\n\nAnd if there is somewhere in Italy you are already considering, we would be curious to hear where.","attribution":{"required":true,"license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/terms#articles-license"},"creditText":"Expat Living Italy (expatliving.it)","citeAs":"“Each nationality has built a different Italy” by Caitlin, Expat Living Italy, 11 August 2026. https://www.expatliving.it/articles/nationalities-in-italy-map","requirement":"Free to use with credit: cite Expat Living Italy and link to the article."}}