FACT AND CRIME FICTION IN ITALY

I just love these surveys where someone, usually the tax payer, wastes a lot of money to find out that people are healthier in Reigate than in Blackburn, or that people like living in the winter better in Palm Springs, California than Fargo, North Dakota.

The annual survey by the economic daily Il Sole 24 Ore into the best places to live in Italy confirmed what anybody who reads Italian crime fiction already knows.

The 103 Italian provincial capitals were compared and not surpringly the bottom ten cities were all in the south, and the top ten were mostly in the far north, apart from Rome and Siena.

Sicily was of course well represented in the bottom ten with Agrigento in last place 103rd, Palermo 94th, Caltanissetta 96th and Catania 100th. But cities from the Naples area south also featured heavily with Caserta 94th, Taranto 98th, Foggia 101st, and Benevento 102nd.

The heel of Italy rounded out this bottom group with Vibo Valentia 95th, Catanzaro 99th, and Reggio di Calabria 97th.

The best places to live in Italy were Trento 1st, Bolzano 2nd, Aosta 3rd, Belluno 4th, and Sondrio 5th.

In fact you could postulate that if you are actually in Switzerland or Austria it is even better.