A silent retreat is redrawing the geography of services in Italy: that of the banks. Branch after branch, the banking system abandoned first the small towns, then peripheral neighbourhoods, finally even many mid-sized towns. For those who use home banking it is an almost invisible evolution; for the elderly, small businesses and fragile territories it is the disappearance of an essential local institution.
The figures of the so-called banking desertification are stark: between 2015 and 2022 bank branches in Italy fell from 29,729 to 20,907. Almost nine thousand closures, nearly a third of the network, in just seven years.
Bank branches in Italy, 2015-2022
Total number of active bank branches nationwide per year
The decade of closures
The time series leaves no room for interpretation: the decline is constant, year after year, without a single sign of reversal. From 29,729 branches in 2015 the figure falls to 27,193 in 2017, 24,201 in 2019, down to 20,907 in 2022. On average, Italy lost more than a thousand branches a year for seven consecutive years, with an acceleration between 2020 and 2021, when more than 1,800 closed in twelve months.
The causes are well known: the digitalisation of payments, bank mergers that eliminated overlapping branches, and cost compression during years of low interest rates. But the point is the distribution of the closures: the network did not thin out evenly, it withdrew from the margins. Today only 4,734 of Italy's 7,904 municipalities have at least one branch: more than three thousand towns, home to millions of people, are territory without a bank.
The 15 cities with the most bank branches
Number of bank branches per municipality, latest available year
Where the banks remain: urban concentration
The municipal ranking shows the other face of the retreat: concentration. Rome leads with 945 branches, Milan follows with 652, then the gap is already enormous: Turin has 300, Naples 219, Bologna 205 and Genoa 189. Florence, Brescia, Palermo, Verona and Padua complete the picture of the main banking centres.
The North-South comparison is telling even at the top: Naples, Italy's third city by population, has a third of Milan's branches; Palermo, the fifth, has 138, fewer than Brescia. The southern banking network was already sparser before the closures, and the decade of desertification has widened the gap.
The map of bank branches in Italy
Bank branches per municipality: the columns show where the network is concentrated and where it has disappeared
Without a bank, without an anchor: the link with fragility
The three-dimensional map makes visible what averages hide: vast areas of the Apennines, the less touristy Alps and the inner South where the columns are simply absent. It is no coincidence that the geography of bank-less towns mirrors that of depopulation and fragility: the branch closure is at once an effect and a cause of decline. An effect, because the bank closes where customers dwindle; a cause, because without a branch a territory loses attractiveness for businesses and families, accelerating the spiral.
For elderly people who are not digital, withdrawing a pension or paying a bill can mean dozens of kilometres of road. For small shopkeepers, cash handling becomes a cost and a risk. Stopgap solutions exist, from agreements with post offices to mobile branches, but the underlying fact remains: between 2015 and 2022 Italy lost 30% of its banking network, and nothing in the time series suggests the descent has stopped. On DatiItalia you can check how many branches remain in your municipality.