Italy's 30 marine protected areas, and their zones

Italy has 30 established marine protected areas and 2 submerged parks, covering about 231,000¹ hectares of sea and about 711 km¹ of coast on the environment ministry's 2026 count, and what you can do inside each one depends on its zone, not on its name.

The criterion: an establishing decree, not a ranking

Every site on this page is here because a ministerial decree established it, and for no other reason. There is no order of merit, and there is no order by size either, because the ministry does not publish a surface figure for each individual area.

That absence is the reason most "best marine reserves in Italy" lists are arbitrary: with no per-site number, any ranking is somebody's preference. The list below is the official register, alphabetical, exactly as it is published.

Two official surface figures for the same 30 areas

The environment ministry gives about 231,000¹ hectares of protected sea for the 30 areas; the ISPRA indicator gives 311,463¹ hectares for the same 30. The difference comes from which perimeters each body counts, not from a mistake.

ISPRA also spreads those 30 areas across 10 regions and records growth of 3.1% in protected sea surface between 2012 and 2023. Its own warning is worth repeating: surface does not measure protection, because what protects the water is the zoning and the enforcement.

Separately, the seventh update of the official protected areas register, adopted by ministerial decree on July 29, 2026, counts 3,456.97 km⁶ of Italian coast inside protected areas of every kind.

Zones A, B and C decide what you can actually do

Each marine protected area is cut into zones with decreasing protection: zone A is an integral reserve, zone B a general reserve, zone C a partial reserve. The letters are the same everywhere, so once you have learned them they work in all 30 areas.

Zone A is the core, and it is the one where swimming, anchoring and fishing are usually excluded or allowed only with a permit. Zone C is where most visitor activity happens. The exact rules per zone are set area by area, so the map at the harbor office is the document that counts, not a general article.

The 30 areas, as the ministry lists them

All 30 are below in the order the ministry publishes them, which is alphabetical and carries no meaning beyond the alphabet.

Capo Caccia-Isola Piana, Capo Carbonara, Capo Gallo-Isola delle Femmine, Capo Milazzo, Capo Rizzuto, Capo Spartivento, Capo Testa-Punta Falcone, Cinque Terre, Costa degli Infreschi e della Masseta, Isole Egadi, Isola dell'Asinara, Isola di Bergeggi, Isola di Ustica, Isole di Ventotene e Santo Stefano, Isole Ciclopi, Isole Pelagie, Isole Tremiti, Miramare, Penisola del Sinis-Isola di Mal di Ventre, Plemmirio, Porto Cesareo, Portofino, Punta Campanella, Regno di Nettuno, Santa Maria di Castellabate, Secche della Meloria, Secche di Tor Paterno, Tavolara-Punta Coda Cavallo, Torre del Cerrano, Torre Guaceto.

One name on that list will already be on your itinerary for another reason: Cinque Terre is a marine protected area as well as a World Heritage property, and the two designations are administered by different bodies with different rules. The water rules are not the trail rules.

The two submerged parks are archaeology, not sea

Italy's 2 submerged parks are Baia and Gaiola, both in the Phlegraean area near Naples, and they sit outside the count of 30. What they protect is a Roman townscape that subsidence took under water, so the object of the visit is a ruin rather than a habitat.

Some institutional communications say Italy has 31 protected marine sites by folding the submerged parks into the total differently. Both counts are defensible; this page keeps them separate because the founding acts are separate.

What is not published, and where that leaves you

The ministry page that lists the 30 areas gives neither a surface nor a region for any single one of them. It also does not say which Italian areas carry the Mediterranean ASPIM designation under the Barcelona Convention, and we have not verified that list elsewhere.

So the practical route is unglamorous: pick the area, find the managing body, read its zone map. There is no national table that will do that step for you.

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