The best of Italy, with the rule behind each list

Why the criterion comes first

Lombardy holds 10 UNESCO properties, more than any other Italian region, counting a transregional site once for each region it touches. Change that counting rule and the ranking changes, which is exactly why the rule is printed above the list instead of being buried underneath it. Two of the rankings in this section reverse completely under a different but equally defensible rule, and they say so.

What these lists refuse to rank

Three things these lists never rank: beauty, atmosphere and authenticity. Where the only honest answer is that the sources do not support an order, the page prints the figures side by side and says that they do not, as it does for the regions whose shares sit close enough to the 73,472,377² of the leader that a revision could reorder them.