If you read enough property pieces on Italy, you will end up with the impression that the entire country is in the middle of an expat gold rush. Pensioners from Idaho buying farmhouses in Le Marche, Londoners restoring trulli in Puglia, the Dutch colonising Umbria, the French taking over the Riviera. In broad strokes, these stories are not untrue. The trouble is that reality is far more complex once you look at the data. Town-level data covering 2019 to 2025 across all 7,500-plus Italian comuni (municipalities) offers a more textured picture than the headlines suggest. Italy’s recorded foreign-resident population rose from 4.91 million in 2019 to 5.28 million in 2025, a 7.5% increase. That is real growth, but it is also slower than most regional growth narratives imply, and the more interesting story sits one layer down: the growth is not landing where people think, and the nationalities that “expat Italy” is supposedly built around are not all moving in the same direction. Why should this matter if you are planning a move? Because the practical question is rarely “is Italy attracting foreigners?” — that one has an obvious yes. The useful questions are: which kinds of foreigners are growing,…
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- Where Are Expats Living in Italy? 2019 – 2025 Analysis
Where Are Expats Living in Italy? 2019 – 2025 Analysis
We mapped foreign-resident growth across all 7,500-plus Italian comuni between 2019 and 2025. The answer is more textured than the headlines suggest: Brits are retreating into pockets, Americans are spreading, the Dutch are quietly colonising the inland Marche, and the most overlooked winners are mid-sized provincial cities you have probably never considered.
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Luca Falda is a Veneto-born writer and strategist with a background in journalism, market research, digital publishing, and finance. A graduate of the University of Padua and a London Institute of Banking & Finance alumnus, he has held senior research roles at AOL, Townsquare Media, and Nordea before moving into investment and real-estate ventures. His work for Magic Towns Italy draws on deep local knowledge of the Veneto, long firsthand expat experience in the UK, USA, Denmark, Malta, and Italy.
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Par Luca Falda
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