Farini has three times more pharmacies per resident than Milan. Bank branches, meanwhile, fell across Italy from 29,729 to 20,907 in seven years.
High above Piacenza, where the Apennines turn steep, Farini has 1,044 residents and an old-age index of 1,053: more than a thousand pensioners for every hundred children under fifteen. It is the oldest town in Italy. And its pharmacy stays open, one for everyone.
The story told about ageing villages never changes. First the young leave, then the services close, then nothing is left for those who stay. Data from 5,866 municipalities say otherwise. In the oldest towns the pharmacy almost always holds. What vanishes is the bank.
Old-age index: seniors per hundred young people. Source: DatiItalia, based on ISTAT data
The ranking of pharmacy density is not led by the cities. At the top sits Montegiordano, 20.03 pharmacies per ten thousand residents, a village in the Cosenza hills. Behind it, Santo Stefano in Aspromonte at 19.98. Those ratios do not exist in Milan: the Lombard capital, with 1,362,863 residents, has 430 pharmacies, one for every three thousand people. Naples, with 905,050 residents and 322 pharmacies, does only slightly better.
The reason is arithmetic before it is political. The staffing plan follows resident population, and in a tiny municipality a single pharmacy is enough to produce a very high ratio per head. So Ponzone, the third-oldest town in Italy, keeps its pharmacy for barely more than a thousand residents. Ormea, in the Cuneo province, has two for 1,446 residents. The ageing town loses everything but the pharmacy.
Pharmacies per ten thousand residents. Source: DatiItalia, Ministry of Health data
The service that abandons old towns is not local healthcare. It is credit. In Farini the bank branch is still listed as open, but the Bank of Italy records neither deposits nor loans there: an address, no longer a bank. The same holds for Ferriere, for Minucciano near Lucca, for Bagnone in the Lunigiana. In Ponzone, in the Alessandria province, no branch is left at all.
This is not an isolated case. Bank branches in Italy fell from 29,729 in 2015 to 20,907 in 2022: almost a third fewer in seven years. The retreat hits small municipalities first, where customers are old and the accounts move little. A pensioner in Farini who wants cash or to pay a bill has to get in the car.
Bank branches in Italy, by year. Source: DatiItalia, Bank of Italy data
Not every old village is alike. Stigliano, in the Matera province, has an old-age index of 590.7 and has been losing residents for years: there were 3,956 in 2019, today there are 3,369. Yet it keeps two hospital facilities and 48 beds, more than many lowland towns three times its size. Here the tale of the abandoned south turns over.
The geography of ageing does not match the geography of abandonment. A town can have the lowest birth rate in its region and still keep the pharmacy, the hospital, even the school. Another, younger and richer, may have lost them all. The question is not how many old people live in a place. It is what is left around them.