Renting 70 square metres can cost €1,700 a month or €70 a month — without leaving Italy. The OMI 2025 rental quotations, available for over 10,800 municipal records, show a split market: on one side the luxury resorts and Milano, on the other an inner Italy where the average rent falls to €1 per square metre per month.
Let's look at the full picture: where rents are highest, where they are most affordable, and how the big cities rank.
Where Renting Costs the Most
At the top of the rent ranking is, once again, Portofino, at €24.47 per square metre per month: for 70 square metres that means over €1,700 a month. Cortina d'Ampezzo follows (€21.82) and then Capri (€19.35), Lignano Sabbiadoro (€16.65), Selva di Val Gardena (€16.40), Ponza (€16.15) and Ortisei (€16.10).
The first real city is Milano, at €15.82 per square metre per month: twelfth overall, ahead of Golfo Aranci, Anacapri and Forte dei Marmi. That a metropolis of 1.4 million inhabitants competes with elite islands and Alpine resorts says a lot about the pressure on Milan's rental market.
The municipalities with Italy's highest rents
Average rent per square metre per month, OMI 2025 quotations.
The Big Cities: Milan Off the Scale, Rome at a Distance
The comparison between metropolises is stark. Milano at €15.82 per square metre means about €1,100 a month for 70 square metres. Roma follows at €12.01 (around €840 a month for the same space), Firenze at €10.16. The gap between Milano and Roma, on the rent of a two-room flat, is worth roughly €200-250 a month: a difference that weighs above all on students and young workers.
It should be noted that OMI data captures average rents across the whole municipal territory: in central districts and in the single-room market, actual figures can be significantly higher.
Where Renting Costs Almost Nothing
At the other end of the ranking, minimum quotations touch €1 per square metre per month: this happens in Terenzo, in the Parma Apennines, in Castelvecchio Calvisio and Cocullo in the province of L'Aquila, and in Salaparuta in Sicily. In these municipalities, 70 square metres rent — on paper — for €70 a month.
These values describe near-nonexistent markets: thin demand, empty houses, shrinking population. The same geography we met when analysing sale prices: the inner Apennines, the Abruzzo earthquake-crater areas, rural Sicily.
The municipalities with Italy's lowest rents
Average rent per square metre per month, OMI 2025 quotations, ascending order.
Which Regions Concentrate the Expensive Rents
Grouping the 50 municipalities with the highest rents by region, the usual three poles emerge: the eastern Alpine arc (Trentino-Alto Adige and tourist Veneto), the premium coasts of Liguria, Campania and Sardinia, and Lombardy, driven by Milano and Lake Garda. The South appears almost only through its tourist islands and coasts: Capri, Anacapri, holiday Sardinia.
Expensive rent, in Italy, follows the map of tourism rather than the map of work — with one big exception: Milano.
Expensive rents: the regional breakdown
Regional breakdown of the 50 municipalities with the highest rents (OMI 2025).
Sea and Mountains: Tourist Rents Beyond the Metropolises
Scrolling through the upper part of the ranking, what strikes is how little the cities matter. After Portofino, Cortina d'Ampezzo and Capri, the list continues with Lignano Sabbiadoro in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (€16.65), Selva di Val Gardena (€16.40), Ponza (€16.15) and Ortisei (€16.10): all places where the rental market is shaped by the tourist season, not by residency. Golfo Aranci in Sardinia (€15.80), Anacapri (€15.60) and Forte dei Marmi (€14.74) also rank ahead of or close to any metropolis except Milano, while Sirmione, on Lake Garda, closes at €13.96.
In these resorts the average rent coexists with often ordinary resident incomes: the market is built for holidaymakers, and those who live and work there all year round — seasonal workers included — struggle to find housing at prices proportionate to their wages. It is a concentrated version of the same problem Milano experiences at metropolitan scale.
Rent and Income: The Real Weight of the Lease
Rent data should always be read alongside incomes. In Milano, a rent of €1,100 a month for 70 square metres equals about a third of the city's average gross income (€40,521 a year). In Roma, €840 a month weighs proportionally even more, because average income is €31,360. In the tourist resorts the ratio breaks down entirely: in Portofino the theoretical annual rent of a flat exceeds 20% even of the local average income, which is the highest in Italy.
To assess a move, compare rents, incomes and cost of living of the municipality you are interested in on its DatiItalia profile, or use the municipality comparison tool.
Methodological note: average rents per square metre per month from OMI 2025 quotations; some municipalities have several OMI zones. For some large cities (including Napoli, Torino and Bologna) the aggregated municipal rent figure is not available in the 2025 quotations.