Between Ribordone, 60 kilometres north of Turin, and Platì, on Calabria's Aspromonte, lie almost a thousand kilometres and 27 years of demographic distance. In the small Piedmontese municipality the residents' average age is 64.7 years, the highest in Italy; in the Calabrian town it is 37.5, the lowest. Two villages, two demographic Italies.
Aging is the phenomenon reshaping the country more than any other, but it does not advance uniformly: it races through small mountain municipalities now devoid of young people and slows in a few pockets of youth concentrated mainly in the South and in the South Tyrolean valleys. In this article we explore the age structure of Italy's 7,896 municipalities through three indicators: average age, old-age index and dependency ratio.
The ranking of the oldest towns
The average-age league table is an atlas of inner Italy. After Ribordone (64.7 years) come Poggiodomo, in the province of Perugia, at 64.6, and Villa Santa Lucia degli Abruzzi, in the L'Aquila area, at 64.4. Just behind, a sequence of Apennine and Alpine micro-municipalities: Colledimacine and San Giovanni Lipioni in the Chieti area, Drenchia on the Friulian border, Magasa in the Brescia area, Fascia and Gorreto in the Genoese hinterland.
The profile is always the same: mountain villages under 200 inhabitants, where youth emigration has lasted three generations and newborns can be counted on one hand per decade. Here the average age exceeds 62: it means the typical resident is a pensioner, and that even the younger half of the population is over 60.
The 15 municipalities with the highest average age
Average age of residents by municipality, year 2026. Small mountain towns of Piedmont, Umbria and Abruzzo lead the list.
Where Italy is still young
At the opposite extreme, the geography flips. Italy's youngest municipality is Platì, in the province of Reggio Calabria, with an average age of 37.5; it is followed by Ordona in the Foggia area (37.8) and two towns of the Caserta hinterland, Orta di Atella (38.0) and Gricignano di Aversa (38.3). The top ten also features Ponte Gardena and Velturno in South Tyrol, Livigno in the upper Valtellina, and Calabrian and Sicilian towns such as Ionadi, Isola di Capo Rizzuto and Camporotondo Etneo.
Italy's pockets of youth come in two kinds. The first is the South with residual high birth rates: municipalities of the Campanian and Calabrian countryside where families remain larger than average. The second is the mountains that work: places like Livigno or the South Tyrolean valleys, where tourism and full employment retain the young people who emigrate elsewhere.
The 15 municipalities with the lowest average age
Average age of residents by municipality, year 2026: southern towns and South Tyrolean valleys lead.
The old-age index: 79 elderly for every child
Average age tells only part of the story. The old-age index, which measures how many over-65s there are per 100 under-15s, reveals even more extreme imbalances. In Colledimacine, in the province of Chieti, the index reaches 7,900: 79 elderly people for every child. In Magasa, on the Brescian side of Lake Garda, it is 5,000; in Noasca, in the Turin area, 4,100. These are municipalities where the school-age population has shrunk to a handful.
The flip side: in Rocca de' Giorgi, in the Oltrepò Pavese, the index is 30 — children outnumber the elderly by more than three to one, an almost unique case in Italy. Then come Orta di Atella (67.1) and Ordona (72.0), the same young towns from the average-age ranking: in the few areas where children are still born, all the indicators move together.
The 15 municipalities with the highest old-age index
Number of over-65s per 100 under-15s, year 2026. In Colledimacine there are 79 elderly people for every child.
Who works for whom: the dependency ratio
There is a third indicator, less known but decisive for public finances: the structural dependency ratio, i.e. how many people of non-working age (under 15 and over 65) weigh on every 100 working-age residents. In Villa Santa Lucia degli Abruzzi the ratio is 171.4: for every 100 working-age people there are 171 dependants. In Poggiodomo it is 161.3, in Gorreto 147.1.
In these municipalities the local economy survives on pensions alone: it is public transfers, not wages, that keep the remaining shops and services alive. It is the terminal phase of demographic aging, when the age pyramid has fully inverted. And while in national aggregates the dependency ratio rises slowly, in hundreds of small municipalities it has already exceeded levels no local welfare system can sustain for long.
The 15 municipalities with the highest dependency ratio
Residents of non-working age per 100 of working age, year 2026. In Villa Santa Lucia degli Abruzzi the ratio is 171 to 100.
The age map: two Italies
Seen from above, the distribution of average age draws two sharply distinct Italies. The Apennine ridge, the western and Ligurian Alps and much of the inner areas of Sardinia and Molise form a continuous arc of elderly municipalities. The urbanised plains, the Campanian and Sicilian coasts and the South Tyrolean arc remain the last reservoirs of youth.
The three-dimensional map below makes this dual country visible: each column is a municipality, with height and colour representing the average age of its residents.
Average age, municipality by municipality
3D map of the average age of residents in each of Italy's 7,896 municipalities, year 2026.
What it means for the future
Age structure is the most reliable of demographic predictors: today's forty-year-olds are the pensioners of 2050, and the children not being born today are the workers who will be missing in twenty years. For the municipalities topping the aging rankings, destiny is largely written: without immigration, a village with an average age of 64 and an old-age index above 4,000 is headed for demographic extinction within a generation.
The real game is played in the in-between municipalities, those with an average age of 46 to 50: mid-sized cities and urban belts where housing policies, childcare services and the attraction of new residents can still bend the curve. On DatiItalia you can compare the average age, old-age index and dependency ratio of every Italian municipality and see where yours stands.