The population of Italy is just under 58 million people, according to a recent estimate. The birth rate was put at 8.93 per thousand, one of the lowest in Europe and below the EU average of about 12 per thousand – surprisingly given the Italians’ preoccupation with children and family. Demographers have been predicting an ongoing fall in the numbers, a slight increase in the birthrate in the past few years combined with immigration may well keep the population steady. More children are born in the south than in the north, the birth rate in Emilia-Romagna is half that of Campania.

Heavily populated areas include those around Rome, Milan and Naples, Liguria, Piemonte and parts of Lombardia, the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Portici, a suburb of Napoli, located directly under Mt Visuvius is the second most densely populated spot in the world, Hong Kong being the first.

The Italians of today are descended primarily from the ancient Etruscans and Romans. Various other peoples have been added to the native population, so that mixed with familiar dark-haired, olive-skinned Mediterranean faces one sees blonde, blue-eyed Italians whose forebears probably came from the north.

There is only a small minority of people that are non-Italian speaking, which includes German speakers in Alto Adige (in the province of Bolzano) and a tiny French-speaking minority in the Valle d’Aosta. Some people in around Trieste along the border with Slovenia speak Solvene. In the south are pockets of Greeks and Albanians, descendants of immigrants in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Nearly all Italians are Roman Catholics, although many do not attend church regularly. There are about 100,000 Protestants. Many of these are Waldenses, a Christian sect dating from the Middle Ages. Italy also has a small Jewish community. Roman Catholicism was made the official religion of Italy under the 1929 Lateran pacts with the Vatican. This official status ended in 1985, when revisions to the pacts provided for the separation of church and state.