Between neighbourhoods the gap is wider: areas up to five times richer

The skyscrapers of Citylife in Milan, home to millionaire footballers and influencers; the stately palaces of Parioli, the stronghold of Rome's upper middle class, which house hidden gardens; the villas of Corso Picco, inhabited here too by football professionals based in Turin (including, among the richest of all, Cristiano Ronaldo). It is here that the wealth of Italy's large metropolitan areas is concentrated, in stark contrast with areas that, with their postcodes differing only by a few digits, tell a completely different story: Quarto Oggiaro, which is only a handful of kilometres away from Milan's Three Towers; Ostia Antica and Bagnoletto, which are also geographically distant from Parioli; and Barriera di Milano, a large working-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Turin. The Mef's numbers speak for themselves: in the metropolitan area of the Lombard capital there is a Cap (20145, which includes several areas: from De Angeli to San Siro, all in the western area) where the average declared income in 2023 exceeds 94 thousand euro. On the other hand, in the area identified by Cap 20157 (which includes Quarto Oggiaro, as well as the Gallaratese neighbourhood), the average income exceeds 20 thousand euros by a small margin. Between the two portions of the city (it is not even a metropolitan area: the areas fall within the boundaries of the municipality) there is therefore an income difference of about five times. The same is true for Rome, where the lowest declared incomes are 17,317 euro (in Cap 00119) while the highest are over 77,500 (in Cap 00197) and therefore almost 4.5 times higher.

Income inequality is also very high in Palermo, where the lowest incomes are concentrated in the area identified by Cap 90137 and reach the 9,000 euro threshold while the highest incomes, declared by those living in the areas codified by 90144, exceed 37,200 euro. The ratio, even here, is almost five times