{"id":48868,"date":"2026-04-25T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magictowns.it\/?post_type=podcast&p=48868"},"modified":"2026-05-01T19:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:07:09","slug":"where-expats-actually-live-in-italy-and-why","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/magictowns.it\/it\/podcast\/where-expats-actually-live-in-italy-and-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Expats Actually Live in Italy (And Why)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anna:<\/strong> Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Hello everyone. Hi Anna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Hi. So, today we are talking about a question a lot of our listeners ask: where do expats in Italy live?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Indeed, and we’re not just going to talk about large cities like Rome and Milan, but also smaller towns where the general expat concentration is high or rising, and also about special pockets for Americans, Germans, Dutch, and other nationalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> This is something that we are adding to the Town Explorer, and I think it is one of the most revealing ways of looking at Italy, not just how many foreign residents a town has, but which nationalities are actually shaping it, where their presence is [00:01:00] deepening, where it is fading. So yeah, I find it really interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> So if you just rank towns by the number of Western expats, you get the picture you’re going to expect. You have Rome, Milan, and Florence. At the top you have Turin, Bologna<\/a>, Venice. That’s still where the bulk of people are. Just talking numbers: only Rome and Milan have more than 10,000 expats followed at a distance by Florence. And then you have some more of the usual names in the top 10, like Turin, Bologna and Verona<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah, so the obvious story is still true, the big cities are the main gateways into Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yes, but it gets interesting when you start looking just below the top tier. One name we talk a lot about these days is Lucca<\/a>. Lucca definitely punches above its weight. It has become a magnet, especially for British and American citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> And Lucca is a good bridge between the two words we are talking about today. It’s not a tiny hidden [00:02:00] village, but it’s also not Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Definitely not. And the story we’re talking about is not size related. The question we’re trying to answer is not necessarily where are the most expats, but where does the nationality really show up on the map?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah, so what we found is that Italy is a lot of different maps laid on top of each other. Like a Dutch map, a British map, French border map, a Russian luxury map, I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yeah, a lot of different ways to look at the country. And perhaps the best way to explain what we mean, is to start with a village that almost nobody outside Liguria, that’s Northwestern Italy, would guess. The town’s name is Airole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah, Airole is a small medieval village near the French border, with steep streets, olive terraces. You feel the sea, the mountains are [00:03:00] both close, France is, I mean, just around the corner, it has only about 400 residents, I guess, right? And yeah, there’s something unique about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> And the first modern chapter of Airole as foreign revival was caused by a Dutch painter, Herman Gordijn, and the Dutch sculptor, who’s known as Ondine. A few decades ago, they found the old center when it was run down, they restored the house, and then they brought in their friends and the other artists, and eventually more Northern Europeans. And sometimes we talk about critical mass in expat circles, and this is the phenomenon that we’re talking about, when a few expats become a magnet for a larger expat population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah. I love that because it gives the numbers a soul. Airole isn’t just a place where the Dutch happened to be overrepresented. Like in a town where about a third of the inhabitants are [00:04:00] western expats, the Dutch are more than half. And in a place this small, even a small group can shift your vibe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> The feeling of the town. Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah. In a good way. Of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Absolutely. And sticking to Liguria, there’s another couple of cases, the two other small towns, Apricale and Perinaldo. These are classic Ligurian, iconic villages, you know, murals and a narrow passages and castles. And Perinaldo itself is a small mountain village whose cling to fame is a famous observatory, but both have very large Western expat contingents – about 10% of the inhabitants, and they also have a large French population because they’re so close to the French border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah. So even within this small corner of Liguria you see three different patterns, basically. Airole feels like a Dutch place shaped by friendships, Apricale feels like, an artist [00:05:00] village that has attracted people from across Northern Europe, Perinaldo has a clear French influence, so yeah. Interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yes. Then there’s the Russian story, which it surprised me because I really was not aware of this, until I looked at the numbers. Campione d’Italia is the outlier. It’s an Italian enclave inside Switzerland, on Lake Lugano. And then you have Forte dei Marmi, which is the exact opposite, the kind of vibey, expensive beach club on the town or the Tyrrhenian Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah. Campione feels slightly unreal to me. Like it is in Italy, but held inside another country like crazy. More than 10% of the population is Russian. We are talking about almost 250 people in a town of 1,700 people. Forte dei Marmi, instead, you get it immediately. You know, the sea, the [00:06:00] boutiques, both places attract lots of Russians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yes, rich Russians in numbers. Um, talking briefly about the British map, it is one where the Town Explorer is the most useful, because it corrects a lot of lazy assumptions. People tend to think about the same names, and then you get places you never heard of. Like Palombaro. This is a mountain village in the Maiella National Park in Abruzzo, which even most Italians have never heard of. But where one out of 20 residents is a British national.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> As in many towns in Italy, the British community is well established, but shrinking, I would say, since Brexit the data shows a small decline in British expats across the country in contrast to the rising in American expats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Indeed. This brings me to another town, Introdacqua, another town that very few have heard of, and yet you might be surprised that it is the town in Italy with the [00:07:00] highest percentage of American expats, another small town in Abruzzo, not far from Simona, we spoke about at last week. This is the kind of town that has benefited from the 7% tax scheme. We’re going to discuss what the scheme has worked in attracting residence in one of the next podcasts and in the data the American presence here is not massive. We’re talking about a few dozen people, but it is shaping up and this is a kind of subtle signal that we want people to be able to spot in the Town Explorer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> And then finally there’s the part of the story I almost like most because it is less obvious. So basically expat pockets that are slowly fading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Yes. Emptying out. And the German story here is one of the clearest examples. Germany still has a very deep footprint in Italy, especially in lifestyle and second home geographies. Ahead of the Brits, [00:08:00] Germans are the largest share of expats in Italy with about 40,000 residents, but not every German pocket is expanding, and the textbook example is Capoliveri on the Isle of Elba. Most of our listeners will know of it as the island where Napoleon was exiled. The number of German expats here has gone from around 200 to approximately a hundred people in less than 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Speaking about Germans in general, their influx in Italy seemed to have slowed while in the same period Irish numbers have gone up like 40%, Dutch and Americans up roughly 20% each. So\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> I think it’s fascinating to watch these social maps developing real time, and it reminds me of the old saying that birds of a feather flock together. We see this happen almost organically. There’s one person that finds their corner of paradise and they tell a friend, and suddenly [00:09:00] there’s a new culture that thrives alongside the old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah, we’ve seen this with George, in Mussomeli<\/a>. It only takes one person to act as a catalyst. Before you know it, you have a thriving, giant community taking root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> And that is really the point of this update on which we worked for several weeks. We’re not adding these statistics, and measures and filters just to provide more rankings for the sake of rankings; we add them because we want our subscribers to look at a town and ask better questions. And actually, Anna knows we were talking to someone, one of our subscribers today, and we told him as a preview that he’d soon be able to search for the towns that have the most expats. And his answer was good, so I can avoid them. So. The bottom line is, we are giving you the ability to find according to the criteria that matter the most to you, and then what you [00:10:00] do with this information depends on your own priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Yeah. So that is all for today. When these new measures go live, you’ll be able to see not just where foreign communities exist, but what kind of communities they are, whether they are growing, holding, or beginning to thin out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> And if there is any town that you’d like us to talk about or dissect in the future episode, get in touch with us because as we discover ourselves every day, some of the best stories are in the places that no one expects in it today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna:<\/strong> Absolutely. Thanks for listening guys!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca:<\/strong> Thank you. Have a good weekend.<\/p>\n\r\n\t\t\t

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