The Duomo district has gone from 19,817 to 15,892 residents since 1999, while Quarto Oggiaro, long written off, has grown 11.5%.
In 1999, 19,817 people lived in the shadow of Milan's cathedral. Today there are 15,892. The historic centre has lost nearly a fifth of its residents in twenty-six years, while the city sold the world the opposite story: skyscrapers, the Olympics, students queuing for a studio flat. New figures from the City of Milan, covering 1999 to 2025 for all eighty-eight NILs (the city's official neighbourhood units, now searchable on DatiItalia), say otherwise. "Booming Milan" is an average. And the average hides two cities: a centre slowly draining away and a periphery that is growing, in places dramatically.
The top of the growth table is not a name from the property pages. It is Cascina Merlata, on the far north-western edge: 16 residents in 1999, 956 today. That is a rise of 5,875%, the steepest in the city, driven by the new housing built around the former Expo site. Next come Parco Forlanini–Cavriano, up 203.1%, Ronchetto delle Rane, up 192.7%, and Rogoredo–Santa Giulia, where an entire district was built within the period: up 159.6%. Fifth is Maggiore–Musocco–Certosa, up 134.1%.
The figure that matters most, though, concerns the "difficult" working-class districts. Quarto Oggiaro–Vialba–Musocco, for decades the media shorthand for urban decline, has gone from 29,526 to 32,914 residents: up 11.5%. Villapizzone–Cagnola–Boldinasco has grown 18.1%. Padova–Turro–Crescenzago has grown 13.3%, along the very via Padova the headlines describe as a place people flee. The new university hubs complete the picture: Lambrate–Ortica up 77.6%, Bicocca up 67.3%.
Resident change % by NIL, all neighbourhoods included — logarithmic scale: Cascina Merlata (+5,875%) is a district born from scratch after the Expo area. Source: DatiItalia, based on Comune di Milano open data.
The bottom half of the table flips the script again. It is not the suburbs losing people: it is the heart of the city. The Duomo has shed nearly a fifth of its inhabitants, Porta Ticinese–Conca del Naviglio and Città Studi around a tenth, and even Brera is shrinking. One caveat about the extremes: the sharpest relative fall belongs to the Giardini di Porta Venezia, a statistical micro-district of just 38 residents. Like Parco Nord, it is a park rather than a neighbourhood. Its percentages should be read with care.
The most solid case is Buenos Aires–Porta Venezia–Porta Monforte. It is Milan's most populous NIL, with 61,964 residents, yet since 1999 it has lost almost five per cent of its population. The dense Milan of the nineteenth-century boulevards is not growing: it is changing skin — fewer families, more offices, more short lets.
Resident change % by NIL, all neighbourhoods included — the top two (Giardini Porta Venezia, Parco Nord) are statistical micro-districts with a few dozen inhabitants.
Historical series of residents of the Duomo NIL — Source: City of Milan
The historical series records changes the news cycle misses. Rogoredo–Santa Giulia has gone from 4,514 to 11,717 residents: more than doubled while the papers mentioned it almost solely for its drug-dealing woods. Cascina Merlata travelled the opposite way to its name: from farmstead, 16 inhabitants, to fully fledged neighbourhood, 956, within a generation.
One limit needs stating. For Milan's neighbourhoods we currently hold only residents and households: income, average age and foreign residents at NIL level are not yet on the platform, and exist only at municipal scale. This is a pilot piece: if the format works, more cities and more indicators will follow. Meanwhile, you can look up the population of any Italian municipality below. The centre of Milan, for its part, now houses fewer people than it did at the end of the last century. Hardly anyone has noticed.