Most visited cities in Italy: Rome, Milan, Venice and Florence hold 17.2% of nights, and Rome made all of the gain

What ISTAT measured, and what it left out

The source is ISTAT's "Le trasformazioni dell'Italia: dal Grand tour al turismo di massa", released with the data-story series on 17 July 2026 and reported the same day by Teleborsa. On the cities it says four things: Rome, Milan, Venice and Florence held the top four places by nights throughout 2015 to 2025; together they raised their share of the national total by three percentage points, to 17.2%; Rome alone took 9.4% of all nights in 2025; and Naples rose from 15th to 12th in the municipal ranking. It adds that foreign guests account for more than three quarters of nights in the four cities and for just over 60% in Naples.

The unit is the night spent in registered accommodation (presenze), counted from the forms that hotels and other establishments file with ISTAT. A night is not a visitor. One guest staying four nights counts four times, and a day-tripper who sleeps elsewhere does not count at all. The data story gives no absolute number of nights for any city in 2025.

The denominator is the harder problem. For 2025 ISTAT reports two national totals. The main text gives more than 535 million nights; footnote 1 says that total includes non-business private rentals and that without them it is 481 million. The note under the document's first chart says the 2025 total in that chart excludes those rentals. The city paragraph says neither. ISTAT's IStatData warehouse prints the larger total exactly, 535,463,245 nights, the same value Eurostat publishes. If 9.4% applies to that total, Rome had about 50.3 million nights in 2025; if it applies to 481 million, about 45.2 million (both our calculations). The four-city total moves between about 82.7 million and 92.1 million on the same arithmetic. Those are ranges produced by a missing label. They are not estimates, and we do not use either as Rome's 2025 figure.

Ten years of concentration, city by city

ISTAT's own municipal tables let the comparison be rebuilt for 2015 and 2024 on one basis. Both years count hotels and registered non-hotel accommodation and exclude non-business private rentals. The 2015 figures come from "Movimento turistico in Italia, anno 2015" (November 2016, Prospetto 6); the 2024 figures from "Statistica Today: Turismo 2024" (March 2026, Prospetto 4).

The rebuilt numbers match ISTAT's sentence. The four cities had 55.84 million of Italy's 392.76 million nights in 2015, a 14.2% share, and 79.24 million of 466.16 million in 2024, a 17.0% share. ISTAT's 17.2% for 2025 is three points above 2015. Most of that movement had happened by 2024; the step from 17.0% to 17.2% is small enough to sit inside the change of basis between the two years, so it should not be read as a further rise.

Rome's nights grew 72.1% between 2015 and 2024, from 24.8 million to 42.7 million. The country grew 18.7%. Rome alone added 17.9 million nights, which is 24.4% of the whole national increase and 76.5% of the four cities' increase. Venice grew 30.5%, Milan 19.7% and Florence 0.9%. Naples, outside the top four, grew 32.8% from a much lower base.

The other three cities' combined share hardly moved. It was 7.9% in 2015 and 7.8% in 2024, and 7.8% again in 2025 if ISTAT's two printed figures are subtracted (17.2 minus 9.4). Milan held 3.0%. Venice rose from 2.6% to 2.9%. Florence fell from 2.3% to 2.0%, because its registered nights stayed flat while the country grew. ISTAT does not explain why Rome's registered count rose so much faster than the others. Growth in demand, new registered accommodation and better reporting by establishments would all raise it, and the published tables do not separate them.

Rome made all of the gain

Rome's share rose from 6.3% in 2015 to 9.2% in 2024 and 9.4% in 2025. That is the whole of the four-city story. Take Rome out and the picture is ordinary. Milan, Venice and Florence together grew 17.7% from 2015 to 2024, a little below the national 18.7%, and nights in the rest of Italy outside the four cities rose 14.8%. Inside the four cities the rise was 41.9% (all our calculations from the same tables).

The 2025 step has an obvious candidate cause and limited measurement. The Bank of Italy's regional report on Lazio (June 2026) puts the rise in foreign tourists' spending in the region at 19.2% in 2025, against 4.6% nationally, and attributes nearly 60% of the increase to pilgrims. On the bank's own international tourism survey, foreign presences in Lazio rose 27.8%, against 2.3% nationally, and more than a third of that growth came from Jubilee travellers. Quotidiano Nazionale reported the 27.8% as arrivals. None of these figures is for the comune of Rome, and the same report says registered presences in the metropolitan city of Rome grew a much smaller 1.9%. What can be said is that Rome's share was already 9.2% in 2024, before the Jubilee year, so most of the shift happened before it. The 9.2% and 9.4% sit on different bases, so the Jubilee's own effect on Rome's share cannot be read from them.

Rome's absolute 2025 count is published by others on other boundaries. Eurostat's NUTS 3 series for the metropolitan city of Rome shows 56,002,908 nights in 2025, now including non-business private rentals (Eurostat's national total for 2025 matches ISTAT's total with rentals, so its provincial values are taken to be on that basis), against 47,220,329 in 2024 on the old basis. The city's own figure from the Ente Bilaterale del Turismo del Lazio, released through Turismo Roma, was 52.92 million for 2025, with no stated area or method. Our Rome tourism statistics article sets the four series side by side and explains why none of them is a growth rate for 2025.

Venice, Florence and the boundary problem

The municipal ranking measures administrative units. For Venice the unit is the comune, which includes Mestre, Marghera, the Lido and the lagoon islands as well as the historic centre. For Florence it is a city of 361,705 residents whose surrounding hill towns, Chianti villages and the rest of the metropolitan area sit in other municipalities. A traveller's idea of the place and ISTAT's line on the map rarely coincide.

Venice shows the gap most clearly. In 2024 ISTAT counted 13,290,973 nights in the comune, third in Italy. Three beach municipalities on the coast north-east of the lagoon held 17,830,540 between them: Cavallino-Treporti (6.76 million, 6th in Italy), San Michele al Tagliamento (5.57 million, 7th) and Jesolo (5.50 million, 8th), with Caorle (4.43 million) 9th. These are beach and campsite resorts in the province of Venice with mostly foreign guests: Cavallino-Treporti alone held 2.3% of Italy's non-resident nights in 2024 and 0.4% of resident nights (ISTAT). The province as a whole, in Eurostat's NUTS 3 data, had 38.8 million nights in 2024, almost three times the comune. A ranking of "most visited cities" that names Venice third is right about the comune and silent about the province around it, which on its own had more nights than the comuni of Milan and Florence put together (Eurostat province against ISTAT comuni).

Eurostat's provincial series adds a 2025 view on the new basis that includes non-business private rentals. On that count the four metropolitan provinces held 133.1 million of Italy's 535,463,245 nights, 24.9% (our calculation). The 2024 share on the old basis was 25.1%. Because the basis changed between the two years, that small fall is not a measured decline, and Eurostat sets no break flag on the series. The individual provinces moved very differently across the change: Milan rose 26.8%, Florence 20.9%, Rome 18.6% and Naples 9.5%, while the province of Venice fell 0.7% even with private rentals added. The published data do not show how much of each jump is rentals entering the count. The Venice figure is the one that stands out, and our Venice depopulation article covers what is and is not counted in the city itself, including day visitors, who appear in no nights series.

Florence's flat municipal count carries a similar warning. ISTAT recorded 9,106,500 nights in 2015 and 9,192,960 in 2024. Over the same period the city's short-term rental market grew to the point where the council banned new lets in the UNESCO centre, a ban the regional administrative court upheld in May 2026. Private rentals let without a business registration were outside ISTAT's count in both years, so the flat line describes registered accommodation, not demand for Florence. Our Florence rental ban article has the permit numbers.

Foreign nights are far more concentrated

Concentration is much stronger among foreign guests than among Italians. In 2024 Rome alone held 12.3% of all non-resident nights in Italy, Venice 4.6%, Milan 4.1% and Florence 3.0%, according to ISTAT's Prospetto 4. Added together that is about 24% of foreign nights, close to one in four. For Italian residents the same four cities held about 8.6% of nights (both sums are ours, from ISTAT's rounded shares). Rome's share of resident nights was 5.4%.

ISTAT's 2025 data story gives the other side of the same pattern: foreign guests account for more than three quarters of nights in the four cities, against 55.3% for Italy as a whole in that document. Naples, at just over 60% foreign, sits between the national average and the big four.

The top 50 municipalities show the same skew. In 2024 they held 197.4 million nights, 42.3% of the national total, and 50.8% of all foreign nights, according to ISTAT. In 2015 the top 50 held "almost 160 million" nights, or 40.5%. The national bed base spreads over thousands of municipalities, but half of what foreign guests spend in nights lands in fifty of them.

Beyond the big four

The rest of the 2024 top twenty is mostly coast and lake. Rimini is fifth with 6.94 million nights, then the four Venetian beach towns, then Bologna (4.15 million) tenth, Lazise on Lake Garda eleventh and Naples twelfth with 3,862,329. Lignano Sabbiadoro, the Romagna resorts of Cesenatico, Riccione and Cervia, Turin, Verona, Sorrento and Ravenna fill the places to twentieth. Ten of the top twenty are seaside resorts and one is on Lake Garda. The list behaves like a list of where Italian and foreign visitors take beach holidays as much as a list of cities.

Below the top four, the largest climb in ISTAT's municipal tables is Bologna's: 20th in 2015 with 2.18 million nights, 10th in 2024 with 4.15 million, a rise of 90.5% (our calculation). Naples, the climb ISTAT's data story singles out, rose from 15th to 12th. Its registered count rose from 2.91 million nights in 2015 to 3.86 million in 2024. Other publishers give far larger figures for "Naples" on wider or undefined boundaries, from about 15 million to more than 20 million, as set out in our Naples tourism statistics article, which explains why the three numbers cannot be reconciled. ISTAT's 0.8% share is the only one of them measured on the comune.

Nights per resident: where the four cities feel the pressure

Share of national nights says where tourism goes. Nights per resident says how heavily it sits on a place. On ISTAT's 2024 nights and the census population at 31 December 2024, Venice had 53.3 nights per resident, Florence 25.4, Rome 15.5 and Milan 10.3. Naples had 4.2. Italy as a whole had 7.9, ISTAT's own figure. (The city ratios are ours. Venice uses 249,490 and Naples 909,013 residents at 31 December 2024, from ISTAT demographic data.)

The ranking reverses on this measure. Rome has the most nights and sits in the middle of the five on intensity. Venice has a third of Rome's nights and more than three times its pressure per resident, and the ratio for the historic centre alone, on the city's own figures, is several times higher again. None of these four comes close to the small resorts at the top of ISTAT's intensity table, led by Limone sul Garda at 1,097.8 nights per resident; our regional ranking covers that table and the regions.

Claims that do not hold up

Concentration figures travel well because they are short. Four that circulated between January 2024 and June 2026 were checked against the sources.

The QuiFinanza figure is the most precise-looking and the easiest to test. Its article of 13 March 2026 printed the ISTAT municipal values correctly, then said the four cities generate "over 100 million" nights, 21.6% of the national total. The four values it printed add up to 79,243,436, which is 17.0% of ISTAT's 466,158,045. None of the obvious groupings gives it: the top five comuni hold 18.5% and the top eight 22.3% (our calculation). The two territorial claims, 70% of foreign tourists on 1% of the land and 75% on 4%, may describe something real, but neither source has shown how the area share was calculated, and ISTAT's tables do not measure land area per tourist. They should be quoted, if at all, as the speakers' own claims.

What is not measured

Nobody publishes a count of people visiting any Italian city. ISTAT counts nights and arrivals at registered accommodation, so a guest who changes hotel counts as two arrivals, and a visitor who stays with friends, in a second home or in an unregistered let counts as nothing. Day visitors are outside every official series, and they matter most in exactly the places that rank highest on intensity: Venice's historic centre, Florence's centre, the Amalfi coast and the Cinque Terre.

Three gaps are specific to this question. First, as of 6 November 2026 ISTAT has published no 2025 nights by comune, either in a release or in its IStatData warehouse: the warehouse's annual guest-movement table, updated on 12 October 2026, already holds 2025 for Italy, the regions and the provinces, but no municipality. The 17.2% and 9.4% therefore exist only as shares, without the national total they use. Second, no official series separates non-business private rentals by municipality for 2025, so the effect of the new basis on each city's count cannot be isolated. Third, there is no official measure of crowding at the scale visitors feel it, by street, square or hour. Private indices fill the space: Demoskopika's overcrowding index, reported by Geopop in June 2026, put Rimini and Venice at about 17,000 and 16,000 presences per square kilometre, without a stated reference period in the article. Its method was not opened for this piece, so those figures are not verified here.

ISTAT's next quarterly tourism release is due on 23 November 2026. Quarterly releases carry no municipal detail, so the next likely chance to see the four cities' 2025 nights as absolute numbers is ISTAT's annual report, which carried the municipal table for 2024 in March 2026.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. The four cities take one night in six spent in Italy, and nearly one foreign night in four. If crowds are the concern, the numbers point to timing and boundaries more than to avoiding a city. Venice's comune has a third of Rome's nights but more than three times the pressure per resident, and its busiest coast is a separate set of resorts, so a stay on the mainland side or the Lido changes the experience without changing the trip. Florence's registered count has been flat for a decade, but at 25.4 nights per resident it carries the second-highest load of the five cities in this article, and day visitors are not in any figure. Bologna, tenth in the 2024 ranking with 4.15 million nights, and Naples, twelfth, carry a fraction of the four cities' foreign load and both sit on the main high-speed rail line. Our Rome travel guide covers the city that now holds almost one tourist night in ten.

Tourism businesses and investors. The concentration story is a Rome story. Anyone underwriting demand in Milan, Venice or Florence on the strength of "the big cities are taking share" is reading a national trend that those three cities did not share between 2015 and 2024: their combined share held at about 7.8% to 7.9%. Rome's 72% rise in registered nights over nine years is the outlier, and its causes are not separated in published data. The binding question for 2025 and 2026 is how much of each city's count now comes from private rentals, and that split is not published by municipality. A provincial view gives a different picture of Venice, where the province's beach resorts hold most of the nights. The assessment would change if ISTAT's 2025 municipal table shows Milan, Venice or Florence moving more than a few tenths of a point, or if Rome's share falls back after the Jubilee.

Journalists and analysts. Safe to cite: Rome, Milan, Venice and Florence held 17.2% of Italian tourist nights in 2025, up three points since 2015, and Rome alone held 9.4% (ISTAT, Storie dati, 17 July 2026, denominator not stated). For absolute numbers use 2024: 79,243,436 nights in the four comuni, 17.0% of 466,158,045 (ISTAT, Statistica Today, March 2026). The top 50 municipalities held 42.3% of nights and 50.8% of foreign nights in 2024. Do not cite "over 100 million nights" or "21.6%" for the four cities, do not present the 70%-on-1% or 75%-on-4% territorial claims as statistics, and do not compute 2025 growth for any city across the change of basis. The running finding of this series holds here too: Italy publishes rankings and shares, and the measures closest to what residents and visitors feel, people per day and day visitors, are not published at all. Our 2026 record watch tracks the national totals as they arrive.