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CRIME

MAP: Which are the safest parts of Italy to live in?

If you've ever wondered how safe your favourite part of Italy is, new crime statistics reveal the safest - and most dangerous - areas of the country based on the number of offences recorded.

Published: 26 October 2021 14:08 CEST
Updated: 4 November 2021 16:58 CET
A crime map shows the safest (and the most dangerous) places to live in Italy.
A crime map shows the safest (and the most dangerous) places to live in Italy. Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP

Crime in Italy is on the rise again after a brief lockdown-induced lull, according to new statistics released by the Italian Interior Ministry’s Department of Public Safety.

And data analysis of the number and type of crimes committed by province has revealed Italy’s top crime hotspots.

Milan, Lombardy, was revealed to be Italy’s crime capital, according to data analysis by newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

The city and province took first place based on the number of offences recorded per 100,000 inhabitants – with petty theft accounting for 9 percent of the overall figure.

READ ALSO: Ten things you need to know before moving to Italy

Some 159,613 crimes in total were reported in the area in 2021, or 4,866 per 100,000 people.

Bologna took second place with 4,636 (47,192 in total) and Rimini in third place with 4,603 (15,642).

Prato, Florence and Turin are next on the list for overall violations. Rome was ranked 7th with 4,150 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants.

However, the map changes according to the type of crimes committed.

Trieste is the province with the highest number of reports of sexual violence in relation to residents for the second year running, with 20.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Padua takes the lead for drug offences, while Naples holds the record for robberies and burglaries, sitting in first place out of the entire country for these two categories.

Parma has the highest number of shop robberies, which remained the case even during the pandemic.

But how about at the other end of the scale?

The figures also showed the places in Italy experiencing the least crime, with Oristano in Sardinia currently ranked as the safest province in Italy in terms of the number of complaints lodged per capita.

The old town in Oristano, Sardinia. The safest city in Italy.
The old town in Oristano, Sardinia. Photo: Jürgen Scheeff on Unsplash

Here are the top ten safest provinces in Italy, based on the crime data of total amounts of offences recorded with regards to number of inhabitants and types of crimes committed.

    1. Oristano, Sardinia.
    2. Pordenone, Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
    3. Benevento, Campania.
    4. Treviso, Veneto.
    5. Cuneo, Piedmont.
    6. Lodi, Lombardy.
    7. L’Aquila, Abruzzo.
    8. Potenza, Basilicata.
    9. Sondrio, Lombardy.
    10. Trento, Trentino–Alto Adige.

The interactive map below shows the location of these provinces and how many crimes have been committed in each in total.

Oristano ranks in last place for theft, while Pordenone comes at the bottom for fire-related crimes.

Meanwhile, Benevento has the least sexual violence crime in Italy, with zero reports recorded for this type of offence.

There were 5,215 crimes reported per day on average in the first half of the year, up 7.5 percent compared to 2020, but down 17 percent compared to the same period in 2019.

Not only are criminal acts increasing after a dip during the various pandemic-created lockdowns, they’re also changing in nature.

READ ALSO: The Italian towns with the best (and worst) quality of life

Digital crimes in particular have spiked amid the rise of computerised services and online work in Italy over the past couple of years.

The pandemic-related boom in remote working, known in Italy as ‘smart working‘, was a major change for a country where this was previously almost unheard of.

Along with this shift in working practices, cyber crimes are also increasing and now account for almost half of thefts and 15 percent of total crimes, exceeding pre-pandemic levels, the data showed.

Reports of phishing, fraud, identity theft and digital crimes have increased dramatically. In the first months of 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, fraud increased by 20 percent while IT-related crimes rose by 18 percent.

READ ALSO: Italian police break up online network selling fake Covid ‘green passes’

The website of Lazio, the Italian region that includes Rome, is one such example. It was hit by a huge cyber attack in August, which meant that people could no longer use it to book a Covid vaccine.

Thefts, robberies and sexual assaults, which had declined in the lockdown months, also returned to growth.

Compared to 2019, thefts are still down 36 percent, but in the first six months of 2021, thefts from break-ins rose by 35 percent, motorbike theft is up 17 percent and car theft has increased by 16 percent.

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MOVING TO ITALY

Readers recommend: Eight books you must read to understand Italy

After we published our own recommendations of some of the best books to read for those considering a move to Italy, The Local's readers weighed in with suggestions of your own.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:24 CEST
Readers recommend: Eight books you must read to understand Italy

In our previous guide to some of the best books to read before moving to Italy, we asked our readers to get in touch with your recommendations.

A number of you responded with your favourite reads about Italy; here’s what you suggested:

Ciao Bella – Six Take Italy

An anonymous reader describes this as “a delightful book about an Australian radio presenter who takes her husband and four children Bologna for a year which turns into two years (one being Covid).”

Kate Langbroek’s comic memoir “had me laughing and crying,” they write.

A Small Place in Italy

An apt choice for those considering their own rural Italian renovation project, Sam Cross recommends this book by British writer Eric Newby about buying, remodelling and moving into a cottage in the Tuscan countryside.

Cross also recommends Newby’s earlier work, ‘Love and War in the Appennines’, about his time as a British prisoner of war captured in Italy by the Germans in WWII.

READ ALSO: Eight of the best books to read before moving to Italy

Here, the author tells of his escape assisted by local partisans, “including a girl, Wanda, who became his future wife. A beautiful story,” says Cross.

The Italians

The Italians is written by veteran Italy correspondent John Hooper, who formerly wrote for the Guardian and is now the Economist’s Italy and Vatican reporter.

From politics to family traditions and the Mafia, the book tackles a range of aspects of Italian history and culture without getting lost in the weeds.

Simone in Rome describes it as “the best single volume on Italian customs and culture there is”.

READ ALSO: Nine things to expect if you move to rural Italy

Venice

It may be more than six decades old, but Jan Morris’s Venice is still considered one of the definitive English-language works on the lagoon city.

Book, Venice, library

A woman reads a book in Venice’s famous Acqua Alta library. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Though a work of non-fiction, the book has been compared to Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited for its nostalgic, evocative tone.

“A personal view, beautifully written,” recommends reader Mary Austern.

Thin Paths

Described as a mix of travel book and memoir, Thin Paths is written by Julia Blackburn, who moved with her husband into a small house in the hills of Liguria in 1999.

Despite arriving with no Italian, over time she befriended her elderly neighbours, who took her into their confidence and shared stories of the village’s history under the control of a tyrannical landowner and the outbreak of World War II.

“Write it down for us,” they told her, “because otherwise it will all be lost.”

READ ALSO: Six things foreigners should expect if they live in Rome

In Other Words

If you’re currently learning Italian, consider Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words / In Altre Parole, which discusses the writer’s journey towards mastery of Italian through full immersion.

Reader Brett says, “The book is written in both Italian and English, presented on opposite pages, so it’s also a nice learning tool!”

Lahiri has since written Racconti Romani, or Roman Tales, a series of short stories set in and around Rome riffing off Alberto Moravia’s 1954 short story collection of the same name.

A Rosie Life in Italy

Ginger Hamilton says she would “highly recommend the ‘A Rosie Life in Italy’ series by Rosie Meleady.”

It’s “the delightfully written true story of an Irish couple’s move to Italy, purchase of a home, the process of rehabbing it, and their life near Lago di Trasimeno.”

The Dark Heart of Italy

Reader William describes The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones as an “excellent” book.

The product of a three-year journey across the Italy, Jones takes on the darker side of Italian culture, from organised crime to excessive bureaucracy.

Though it was published in 2003, Dark Heart stands the test of time: “twenty-odd years old but the essential truth of it hasn’t changed,” William writes.

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