Sources: how a figure gets verified

Every figure on this site resolves to a ledger entry with a named source, a confidence rating and a recheck date, and where two official Italian bodies publish different numbers for the same thing, both numbers go on the page.

Three confidence levels, one rule each

There are three confidence levels, and high is the only one that needs two independent sources for the same value. Medium means one primary source. Low means a single secondary source, and a low fact is a shopping list item, never a sentence in a published page.

A page needs at least two solid facts to exist at all. Where an entity cannot reach that bar, it is written up inside its region rather than padded into a page of its own.

Recheck dates, not eternal truths

Every fact carries the date by which it must be verified again, and the dates are short where the underlying source moves: opening hours and prices for the next season, tourism statistics for the next annual release, climate normals for the next 30-year period.

Prices and hours are the fastest to rot, which is why each page shows when it was updated rather than implying it is permanent.

When official sources disagree

Six disagreements between Italian institutional sources are kept as disagreements rather than flattened. The national parks are the clearest: the environment ministry map georeferences 24 parks with an operational management body, while the ministry list updated on May 21, 2025 contains 27 entries.

The three extra entries are the reason both numbers are true. Matese and Portofino appear with provisional boundaries, and the Golfo di Orosei e del Gennargentu park was established but never made operational.

Etna is the same problem in meters. The INGV profile gives 3,324³ m (10,906 feet), the Civil Protection Department profile 3,350³ m, and an INGV drone survey in July 2024 measured 3,369³ m at the rim of the Voragine. An active volcano does not have one height, it has a date.

Where the material comes from

Seven families of source cover almost everything, and each fact names its own: the national statistics office for tourism nights, the culture ministry for state museums, the environment ministry for protected areas, INGV and the Civil Protection Department for volcanoes, the Air Force meteorological service for climate normals, municipal ordinances for traffic zones, and the operators themselves for timetables and fares.

Nothing here is taken from another travel site. Where a source could not be read, including pages that render only in a browser and refuse an automated request, the page says so rather than borrowing the number from somewhere easier.

Corrections and reuse

One address takes corrections, info@rankwit.ai, and a report that arrives with a link to the primary source gets fixed fastest. The about page sets out the perimeter and the editorial rules; nobody agrees how tall Etna is shows what publishing a disagreement looks like in practice.

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