Milan is officially Italy's capital of singles: 50.9 percent of its residents are unmarried, more than one in two. In Naples, 770 kilometres further south, the share drops to 45.4 percent, while married residents approach 44.7 percent and nearly draw level. In between sits Rome, with 47.7 percent never married and 40.9 percent married.
Marital status is one of the most revealing statistics there is: inside these percentages lie the age at which people marry (and whether they marry at all), the spread of cohabitation, the frequency of divorce, longevity and even housing costs. In this article we compare the marital-status composition of Italy's three largest cities, using official data updated to 2025.
Milan, the city where singles are the majority
In Milan the numbers speak clearly: never-married residents make up 50.9 percent of the population, the married 38.2, the divorced 4.5 and the widowed 6.4. It is the only one of the three big cities where people who have never married outnumber half the residents.
The reasons are structural. Milan attracts tens of thousands of students and young workers every year, raising the share of the unmarried; marriages come late, often after 35, and a growing share of couples choose cohabitation without ever visiting the registry office. The divorce figure, the highest of the three cities together with Rome, completes the picture of a society where marriage is less and less the sole container of adult life.
There is also a gender detail: among Milanese males, bachelors clearly outnumber never-married women, while among the widowed the ratio reverses dramatically, reflecting women's greater longevity.
Milan: population by marital status
Percentage composition of residents by marital status, year 2025: never married, married, divorced and widowed.
Rome, the capital's balance
Rome sits halfway: 47.7 percent never married, 40.9 married, 4.5 divorced and 6.9 widowed. The capital combines the traits of the metropolis, with a large young and mobile population, and those of a more traditional city in its outer districts and the municipalities of its metropolitan area.
The divorce figure deserves attention: at 4.5 percent, Rome is aligned with Milan and well above Naples. The share of widowed residents, 6.9 percent, is the highest of the three cities — a sign of a population older on average than Milan's.
Rome: population by marital status
Percentage composition of residents by marital status, year 2025: never married, married, divorced and widowed.
Naples, where marriage holds out
Naples is the city of marriage: married residents are 44.7 percent of the total, ten points above Milan, and nearly catch up with the never married, at 45.4 percent. The divorced are just 2.9 percent, the lowest value of the three cities and a third below Rome and Milan.
Behind these numbers lies a more traditional family model, but also precise demographic factors: in Naples people marry more and earlier, the share of married elderly people is high, and youth emigration paradoxically shrinks the pool of singles. The 7.0 percent of widowed residents, the highest in the comparison, reflects an age structure aging rapidly as young people leave the city.
Naples: population by marital status
Percentage composition of residents by marital status, year 2025: never married, married, divorced and widowed.
What these numbers tell us
The comparison between the three cities captures the transition under way in Italian families. The gradient is sharp: the richer, more academic and more attractive a city is to young adults, the higher the share of the unmarried and the divorced; the more traditional the family model remains, the higher the share of the married and the rarer divorce.
It is the same divide observed nationally between North and South, with one caveat: the share of the never married does not coincide with that of actual singles. Inside Milan's 50.9 percent there are cohabiting partners, de facto couples and civil unions that the marital-status registry does not record as marriages. The figure should therefore be read as a measure of marriage's retreat as an institution, rather than of loneliness.
A final observation concerns the widowed: between 6.4 and 7.0 percent in all three cities, they are an overwhelmingly female and elderly population. With demographic aging under way, this component is bound to grow everywhere, and with it the demand for services for those left alone in the final stage of life. On DatiItalia you can explore the marital status of residents in every Italian municipality.