The demography of Italy is monitored by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat).
At the beginning of 2024, Italy had an estimated population of 58.9 million. Its population density, at 195.7 inhabitants per square kilometre (507/sq mi), is higher than both the EU (106.6/km2) and European (72.9/km2) average. However, the distribution of the population is very uneven: the most densely populated areas are the Po Valley (with about a third of the country's population) in northern Italy and the metropolitan areas of Rome and Naples in central and southern Italy; landlocked, rural and mountainous areas are very sparsely populated, notably the Alps and Apennines ranges, the plateaus of Basilicata and Puglia, the inland highlands of Sicily and the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
