An expert’s honest review of every major city in Italy

There are many ways to compare Italian cities: food, wine, art, architecture, culture, scenery and the intangibles of charm and crowd-free streets.

But what if simple size had a role? What if we looked at cities from the starting point of population? Cities grow and decline over many generations. Do the reasons that caused a city’s rise or fall colour its contemporary appeal?

Introducing size – below we look at Italy’s 30 largest towns and cities (a list which, notably, doesn’t include Venice or Siena) – often brings entirely overlooked destinations into the reckoning. Mestre and Brescia in the north, say, or Taranto, Foggia and Messina in the south, among others.

It’s an interesting exercise, illustrating, for example, how Italian cities with ancient roots – that’s most of them – often prosper today as busy ports or industrial centres of little appeal. But also how ancient roots mean it’s hard to find any city in Italy, whatever the size, without a compelling historic heart.

The ranking below orders cities by the size of their central metropolitan population (the larger the city, the higher the ranking) and also offers a mark out of 10 assessing their all-round visitor appeal.