Best Places to Live in Italy: The Quality of Life Index 2022

Bologna is once again the best place to live in Italy. This is according to Il Sole 24 Ore’s annual Quality of Life Index.

Bolzano placed second and Florence came in third.

The index, which is published each December and looks at the past year’s statistics for each Italian province, considered, in 2022, three timely macro-factors that had an effect on rankings: the war in Ukraine, high energy prices, and inflation.

The 33rd edition of Il Sole 24 Ore’s Quality of Life issue is the litmus test of these phenomena. The survey photographs the level of well-being in the territories based on 90 indicators, of which 40 updated to 2022.

Il Sole 24 Ore Quality of life index 2022

Bologna, winning its 5th 1st-place ranking since 2000, ranked highest in this quasi-post-pandemic year because the city today proves the stereotype that the Bolognese are “dotta, grassa, e rossa”—educated, well-fed (fat), and red. Bologna’s innovative student population, its economy, and UNESCO arcades and social programs attest to these characteristics:

Bologna is red, because in the color of its 62 kilometers of Unesco heritage arcades and its militancy on the left there is the cohesion of a community that loves competition but not social inequalities, as the new Liber Paradisus square (named after the act with which in 1256 the city, first in Europe, abolished slavery).

Another quote from the announcement:

A quarter of the population of Bologna changes every ten years, the Alma Mater continues to fill up with foreign students (+4% again this year while the other universities are losing students), Lepore points out, «and we are a refuge city for Southern Italy, for the homeless, for those in need of medical care. The challenge is to combine high quality services with the idea of ??a progressive city».

Quality of Life 2022: Education, Services and Innovation. Why Bologna won

This is the 33rd year that Il Sole 24 Ore has published its livability index. It uses 90 factors to rank the quality of life in Italy’s 110 provinces. These factors are grouped into six themes: wealth and consumption; business and work; demography and society; environment and services; justice and security; and free time. And while there is one overall winner, it’s instructive to look at which cities/provinces won for particular ranking factors.

As it does every year, Il Sole 24 Ore has created a beautiful, searchable data visualization that lets you check out where each city has ranked on the list over the past three decades. There is also a timeline slider that puts the annual winners (and losers) into context with the news of their respective years.

Check out Il Sole 24 Ore Quality of Life Index 2022 for more details.

Top 25 Italian Provinces in the 2022 Quality of Life Index

Other Notable Stats

Some other notable stats from this year’s Italy Quality of Life Survey

• 2021 Italy Quality of Life winner moved down to #7 in 2022.
• Big cities fell lower on the list. Milan ranked 8th this year, compared to first, two years in a row, in 2018 and 2019. Rome and Turin came in at 31 and 40.
• Tuscany and Emilia Romagna are the top two regions.
• The losing provinces are in the south—Crotone (in Calabria) coming in dead last. However, I was surprised to see Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, in the top 20.
• Italian Capital of Culture 2023 Co-Honorees Bergamo and Brescia (in Lombardy) are both in the top 25 best places to live. They rank 14th and 22nd, respectively.

Each year, the Italian paper Il Sole 24 Ore releases a ranking of all Italian provinces according to a number of factors including artistic patrimony, public transportation, availability and affordability of fresh food, crime, housing prices, youth unemployment, and more.

Browse the tag #qualityoflifeindex to see past summaries.

Post first published on December 19, 2022