Tuscany or Umbria for Retirement? What €200,000 Buys You in Each

If you're dreaming of retiring in central Italy, there's a good chance Tuscany or Umbria is on your list. Perhaps you've fallen in love with a Tuscan hill town, or you've heard that Umbria offers much of the same beauty for less money.

Both regions have lovely towns, beautiful countryside and wonderful food. But if you're thinking about actually living there, you probably have other questions too. How much home could you afford? What are the summers like? And how does healthcare compare?

I looked at the official figures for both regions, then compared three pairs of towns that you may already know: Todi and Cortona, Orvieto and Montepulciano, and Spoleto and Volterra. One thing I found particularly interesting is that Umbria isn't always the cheaper choice.

How house prices and rents compare in Umbria and Tuscany

Umbria has about 851,000 residents in two provinces, Perugia and Terni. Tuscany has about 3.66 million in ten.

For a closer look, I compared Umbria's two provinces with Siena and Arezzo in Tuscany, both popular areas for people considering a move. I left out Florence because its city housing market would make this particular comparison less useful.

A square meter in the province of Perugia costs about €899, compared with about €1,408 in the province of Siena, a difference of more than a third. Terni and Arezzo sit in between.

Renting doesn't follow quite the same pattern. Terni has the highest average rent of these four provinces, at about €4.91 per square meter per month. So if you're planning to rent first, it's worth checking rental costs in the specific towns you're considering, rather than assuming Umbria will always cost less.

How healthcare compares in Tuscany and Umbria

Each region manages its own healthcare services within Italy's national health system. The Ministry of Health assesses them in three areas, using scores from 0 to 100. A score of 60 is the minimum standard.

• Prevention: Umbria 95, Tuscany 96.
• Community and district care: Umbria 82, Tuscany 94.
• Hospital care: Umbria 77, Tuscany 90.

Both regions score well above the sufficiency line in all three areas, and Umbria's prevention score of 95 is close to the best in the country (Emilia-Romagna, for example, scored 97). The difference is in hospital care and in the care you use outside a hospital, where Tuscany scores noticeably higher.

The provincial figures offer some more detail. About one in eight hospital stays by residents of the province of Perugia, and one in six in Terni, take place in another region. In Siena and Arezzo the share is lower, at 6.3% and 8.2%. Siena also has the most medical specialists per person of any of the four, 57.3 per 10,000 inhabitants, which likely reflects its large university hospital. Arezzo has the fewest.

Life expectancy, on the other hand, is very similar. Perugia, Siena and Arezzo all sit between 84.2 and 84.5 years. Terni is a little lower, at 83.4.

You can read more about what the three regional scores measure in our piece on healthcare by region.

Where are Americans and British residents living?

Tuscany has more American and British citizens in total, but it also has a much larger population. As a share of residents, Umbria is slightly ahead.

Umbria has 717 US citizens, 0.084% of its residents, the highest share of any Italian region. Tuscany has 2,599, or 0.071%. For Britons, Umbria has 1,094, or 0.13%, and Tuscany 3,528, or 0.10%.

The numbers are small in both regions, but they may be reassuring if you're hoping to meet other people who have moved from abroad. Of course, citizenship figures can't tell you how active or welcoming a local community will be.

Comparing six towns you may be considering

To make the comparison more useful, I chose three pairs of towns, each with one in Umbria and one in Tuscany. Here's how their prices, climate and populations compare.

Todi and Cortona. Two hill towns with views over a wide valley, and well-established international communities. A square meter in Cortona costs about €1,540, almost three-quarters more than in Todi, at about €893. Todi, though, has many more hot days, about 50 a year above 30°C against about 32 in Cortona.

Orvieto and Montepulciano. Here, the Tuscan town is actually cheaper. Orvieto, in Umbria, costs about €1,250 per square meter, about a fifth more than Montepulciano, in Tuscany, at about €1,047. Orvieto also has the largest number of American citizens among these six towns, at 77, and a direct train line to Rome and Florence. Those may be useful features if you're considering living there, although the figures don't tell us why prices differ. The two towns have almost identical climates.

Spoleto and Volterra. Spoleto is the largest of the six, with almost 36,000 residents, and costs about €995 per square meter. Volterra is a much smaller town, with about 9,400, and costs about €1,403. Volterra has lost about 7.5% of its residents since 2019, the most of any town in the table.

What could you buy with €200,000 in each town?

Let's imagine you have €200,000 to spend on a home. Using the average price per square meter in each town, here's roughly how much space that budget represents. These are illustrations, not actual homes for sale, and they don't include purchase costs, renovation or differences between neighborhoods:

• In Todi, about 224 square meters. In Cortona, about 130.
• In Orvieto, about 160. In Montepulciano, about 191.
• In Spoleto, about 201. In Volterra, about 143.

In two of the three pairs, the Umbrian town buys you considerably more space. In the third, the Tuscan town does.

Is Umbria always cheaper than Tuscany?

Umbria is generally more affordable, but the towns we've compared show why it's worth looking beyond the regional averages. Orvieto, for example, has higher average prices than Montepulciano, even though it's in Umbria.

There are other differences to think about as well. Tuscany scores higher on the healthcare measures we've looked at, while some of the Umbrian towns in our comparison have more very hot days. Neither region will be the right choice for everyone. It really depends on the town, your budget and the kind of daily life you're looking for.

Four things to consider before choosing a town

If you are weighing Umbria against Tuscany, these are the questions I would look at first.

Which towns are on your shortlist? Prices and climate can vary quite a bit within the same region. Compare the towns you're actually interested in, not just the regional averages.

How do you feel about summer heat? Several of the Umbrian towns we looked at average around 50 days a year above 30°C. If you find heat difficult, that may weigh more than the price.

How easy would it be to reach healthcare? Regional scores are useful, but you'll also want to know where the nearest hospital and medical services are, and how you'd get there.

How would you get around? Some towns, like Orvieto and Spoleto, sit on main railway lines. Others, like Volterra and Montepulciano, depend more on the car.

What these comparisons can't tell you

Province averages hide a great deal. A province includes its capital and its smallest villages. The town table gives a better sense of particular places, but even a town's figure averages several very different neighborhoods.

Average prices aren't asking prices. OMI provides official property-value estimates for different areas and property types. The homes you see advertised may cost more or less, depending on their location, condition and features.

Citizenship figures don't capture everyone with an international background. People who have Italian citizenship are counted as Italian, even if they were born elsewhere. The figures also don't tell us how many English-speaking residents or international social groups there are.

The hospital-stay figure counts where residents were treated, for whatever reason. Parts of the province of Terni sit close to the border with Lazio, and some residents may simply use a hospital there because it is nearer.

A note on the numbers

Prices and rents come from the Agenzia delle Entrate's OMI for the second half of 2025. Regional healthcare scores come from the Ministry of Health's Nuovo Sistema di Garanzia for 2024. Province health indicators come from ISTAT's BES well-being data, for 2023 and 2024. Climate figures are 2015–2024 averages from Copernicus ERA5-Land. Population and citizenship come from ISTAT for 2025. You can open every province and town in this piece on its own page, with the source and year next to each number.

If you have lived in Umbria or Tuscany, or have spent time choosing between them, I would love to hear what decided it for you. Was it the price, the town, or something you only noticed once you were there?