Italian cities with a language census: the short list

Only one part of Italy counts its language groups by census, the province of Bolzano, where the 2024 count found the city of Bolzano 74.71%² Italian-speaking and the province 68.61%¹ German-speaking; Valle d'Aosta and Calabria protect their languages by law but don't count their speakers.

The criterion: a public act that counts speakers

A place makes this list if a public authority counts how many people belong to each language group, not only if a law recognizes the language. Recognition is common in Italy; counting is not.

That distinction shortens the list to one province. The other entries below are the places where a law protects or makes official a second language, ranked by how close they come to a number.

Ranked by how precisely languages are counted

Only the first two rows come from a count. The third is an approximation in a description, the fourth and fifth are laws.

Bolzano: the only city that counts, and the surprise it finds

Bolzano, with 107,236³ residents at May 31, 2026, declared itself 74.71%² Italian, 24.74%² German and 0.55%² Ladin at the 2024 census. The province around it declared almost the opposite: 68.61%¹ German, 26.98%¹ Italian, 4.41%¹ Ladin.

Against 2011, the provincial Italian group grew by 0.92¹ points, the German group lost 0.80 and the Ladin group 0.12¹. The census is compulsory for Italian citizens resident in the province, has a reference date of September 30, 2023, and was published as astat info 56/2024.

It exists because it decides something. Group membership sets the ethnic proportional system that allocates public jobs and resources, and that's why it's counted to two decimals rather than estimated.

Aspromonte: a number, but not a census

The Aspromonte, at the southern tip of Calabria, has been a UNESCO Global Geopark since 2021, and its description counts about a thousand speakers of the ancient Greek language of Calabria among 256,087⁷ inhabitants on 64,541 ha⁷.

It's the only figure on speakers we have outside South Tyrol, and it's an approximation, not a census. Treat it as an order of magnitude: a language spoken by roughly one person in 250⁷ in its own territory, by our arithmetic.

Aosta: two official languages, no count

Valle d'Aosta has had a special statute since February 26, 1948, and French stands equal to Italian as an official language of the region. That's parity, not minority protection, which is a stronger status than anything Calabria or the national law provides.

The city of Aosta, 33,124⁵ residents at May 31, 2026, at 583⁵ m, carries both names, Aosta and Aoste. What nobody publishes is how many of those residents speak French at home. Official bilingualism tells you what the signs and the offices must do, not what people speak. More on Aosta.

Calabria: three minorities protected, none counted

Calabria is the only Italian region to protect three historic language minorities together: Arbëreshë Albanian, the Greek of Calabria and Occitan. Regional law no. 15 of October 30, 2003, which applies national law 482⁶ of 1999, set up three institutes, at San Demetrio Corone for the Arbëreshë, Bova Marina for the Greek community and Guardia Piemontese for the Occitan one.

The national law behind it recognizes twelve minority languages, from Albanian and Catalan to Friulian, Ladin and Sardinian, and counts speakers of none. Even the list of Arbëreshë municipalities isn't in the Calabrian law: it's left to provincial boundaries, which is why we can't give you a number. The story of the law is on three minority languages, one law.

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