Italy's most paved-over town isn't in the industrial North
In Casavatore, near Naples, 91.8% of the land is sealed under concrete and asphalt. The top seven towns in the ISPRA ranking all sit in the province of Naples.
One and a half square kilometres, almost all of it covered
In Casavatore, in the province of Naples, 91.8% of the municipal territory is covered by buildings, roads and paved yards. Of its 1.53 square kilometres, 146.75 hectares already lie under asphalt or concrete: less than one hectare in ten remains open ground. It is Italy's most paved-over municipality according to ISPRA's 2024 data — and it is nowhere near Brianza or Milan's hinterland.
When Italians argue about land consumption, the debate almost always points north: Lombardy's warehouses, the logistics sheds along the A4 motorway, Veneto's shopping centres. The municipal figures say something else. The top of the table speaks Neapolitan.
The top seven are all Neapolitan
Behind Casavatore the ranking keeps the same accent. Arzano stands at 83.4%, Melito di Napoli at 81.5%, Cardito at 74.2%. Then come Frattaminore at 72.6%, Frattamaggiore at 71.5% and Torre Annunziata at practically the same level. Seven towns, one province: Naples.
The first Lombard municipality appears in eighth place. It is Lissone, in Brianza, with 71.5% of its land sealed. Behind it come Sesto San Giovanni at 69.2%, Orio al Serio — squeezed between its airport and Bergamo — at 68.3%, Lallio at 67.1% and Baranzate at 63.6%. Lombardy fills the table from tenth place down, but the top remains firmly Campanian. The northern crown of Naples is one continuous city where municipal borders are lines on a map: from Casoria, at 70.9%, you cross into Casavatore without noticing.
Italy's municipalities with the most sealed land (2024)
Share of municipal territory covered by impervious surfaces. Source: DatiItalia, based on ISPRA data.
The big cities sit lower — Rome much lower
Comparing the big cities dismantles another reflex, the one that equates concrete with metropolises. Turin has sealed 65.2% of its territory, Naples 63.7%, Milan 58.7%. Rome, with more than 30,396 hectares covered, has consumed more land than any other Italian municipality in absolute terms, yet in percentage it stops at 23.7%: the vast Agro Romano countryside keeps the average down. No major city comes close to Casavatore's 91.8%.
At the other extreme lies Bionaz, in the Aosta Valley, where sealed land amounts to 0.26% of the territory — some three hundred and fifty times less than Casavatore. In between sit the 7,896 municipalities for which ISPRA publishes the figure.
Casavatore, meanwhile, is a case study in population density too: 11,900 residents per square kilometre, the highest figure in Italy, ahead of Portici, which has sealed 68.9% of its own land. And the average declared income of its taxpayers, €19,008 in 2023, shows this is not the wealthy residential sprawl that drives land consumption elsewhere: it is dense, working-class housing, built when the rules were few.
Land consumption, municipality by municipality
Share of sealed territory, ISPRA data 2024.
What this figure says — and what it doesn't
The ISPRA figure measures sealed soil, not urban quality: it does not distinguish a paved square from an abandoned warehouse. Nor is there, to date, any public municipal data on how much sealed land could be recovered. One more caveat is due: the ranking captures the stock accumulated over decades, not the current pace of new construction, where the Lombardy-Veneto plain still tops the annual reports.
But the stock matters, because it does not go back. Bionaz, up among the Aosta Valley glaciers, has covered 0.26% of its territory in its entire history. Casavatore needed just one and a half square kilometres to reach 91.8%.