What the numbers really say about Italy’s quiet heart

Travelling in 2026 has become a different business altogether. Since the Middle East conflict reignited in late February, jet fuel prices have roughly doubled. Airlines, from KLM to Lufthansa, are quietly cutting routes: entire summer schedules have been rewritten. Strikes, surcharges, “temporary fuel taxes” — the small print on a plane ticket has never been longer. And before any of that, there’s the question that now opens every holiday checklist, the one Google has been autocompleting for two years: “Is X destination safe?”

And when X is Italy — or more precisely, Umbria — the question deserves a proper answer, with the numbers in hand. Is Umbria safe? Let’s look at what the data actually says.

Because it’s a legitimate question. The world is going through a noisy patch, geopolitically and economically. So we decided to answer honestly, the way we’d want someone to answer us if we were planning a holiday from London, Boston, Berlin or Sydney. No brochure language, just numbers.

Setting the yardstick: what “safe” means internationally

The cleanest way to compare safety across countries is the intentional homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants. It isn’t the only thing that matters — pickpocketing, road safety, scams and natural disasters all count — but it’s the indicator least distorted by reporting differences, and the one Eurostat, the United Nations and national statistical agencies use to benchmark themselves against each other.

Here’s where our guests’ main countries of origin sit, based on the most recently published data:

United States (2024): roughly 5.0 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants according to the FBI, or 5.9 according to CDC mortality data — 20,162 homicides in total. Even after a historic drop of almost 15% on the previous year, the US figure is still about ten times the Italian one.
United Kingdom (fiscal year to March 2024): 575 homicides recorded in England and Wales — roughly 1.0 per 100,000 — plus 45 in Scotland and 16 in Northern Ireland.
France (2023): 1.30 per 100,000, the highest absolute figure in the EU at 887 homicides — partly because of population size, but still well above the European average.
European Union average (2023): 0.91 per 100,000.
Italy (2024): 327 homicides in total, a rate of 0.55 per 100,000 — down 2.1% on 2023 (ISTAT).

That last figure is worth a second look. At 0.55, Italy is among the safest countries in Europe alongside Slovenia, behind only Malta (whose tiny population makes the figure very unstable) and ahead of Ireland and Poland. Italy is statistically safer than France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Baltic states and — by a factor of roughly ten — the United States.

If you live in a country where the evening news regularly opens with violent crime, that’s a number worth pausing on for a second. Italy isn’t a country that needs to look safer than it is. It is, by the most internationally standardised measure, among the safest in the developed world.

Zooming in: not all of Italy is the same

National averages hide the regional reality. Italy is twenty regions, each with its own economy, demography and — in some cases — history of organised crime. So the useful question for a traveller isn’t “Is Italy safe?” — it’s “Where in Italy am I going?”

Using the most recent ISTAT regional homicide data (2023), here’s the ranking of Italian regions by homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants:

Highest: Sardinia (1.02), Liguria (0.80), Campania (0.73), Puglia (0.72), Abruzzo and Calabria (0.71 each).
Italian average: 0.57.
Lowest: Lombardy (0.41), Bolzano (0.37), Umbria (0.35), Friuli-Venezia Giulia (0.33).

Umbria is the third-safest region in Italy by this measure — out of twenty. The two that precede it are a small Alpine province and a sparsely populated strip of the north-east on the Slovenian border. Among Italy’s classic travel destinations — Tuscany, Lazio, Veneto, Campania, Sicily — none plays in the same league as Umbria.

Translated into something more intuitive: in 2023, the region of Umbria, with around 850,000 inhabitants, recorded a homicide rate lower than that of Iceland, Switzerland and Japan in the most recent comparisons. We’re talking an order of magnitude below the US national average.

Why Umbria is statistically different

There isn’t a single explanation, but the structural reasons are worth knowing:

No significant organised crime presence. Umbria has historically been outside the operational reach of Italy’s main mafia organisations — Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Camorra, Sacra Corona Unita. That’s not a small detail. A meaningful share of Italian homicide statistics, especially in the South, originates in organised crime dynamics. Their absence is one of the clearest explanations of the Umbrian numbers.

Low population density and a solid rural fabric. The region is hills, woods, olive groves and small towns — a landscape where neighbours still know each other and the social fabric holds. Umbertide, where we are, has fewer than 16,000 inhabitants. Preggio is a hamlet of a few dozen residents. The anonymous dynamics of large cities simply don’t apply here.

A tourism that leans cultural and quiet. Umbria isn’t a stag-do destination, a package-resort coast, or a major city. The visitors it attracts come for art, food, walking routes, wine and silence. The criminal profile linked to that kind of tourism — including the pickpocketing and petty theft that hit Florence, Rome and Naples — is dramatically lower here.

A useful caveat: the annual Indice della Criminalità published by Il Sole 24 Ore, based on Interior Ministry data, places the cities of Perugia and Terni roughly mid-table among Italy’s 106 provincial capitals for total reports per capita. That index, however, is dominated by property crime concentrated in urban centres and inflated by the daily flow of students, commuters and tourists. The serious-crime indicators — homicide, violence, robbery — remain among the lowest in Italy. For a guest staying in the Umbrian countryside, the relevant number is the regional homicide rate, and that number is 0.35.

What this means in practice

Statistics are abstract; guests want to know what real life looks like. So, simply: at Agriturismo Preggio our guests regularly walk the country roads after dinner. They leave the keys in the ignition while loading the suitcases. They take their wallet to the village festival and don’t think about it again. Bicycles stay parked without a lock. The farmhouse door, most of the time, is left ajar.

This isn’t marketing copy. It’s how the Umbrian countryside actually works. The closest thing to a “security incident” most of our guests record is the neighbour’s cat wandering into their room.

A few practical notes for visitors from abroad:

Driving: narrow, winding and gloriously empty roads. Italian drivers can be assertive in cities; out here you can go ten kilometres without meeting another car.
Cash and cards: Italy is now almost entirely on digital payments, but small villages and Sunday markets sometimes still prefer cash for small purchases. ATMs are reliable, contactless payment is everywhere.
Healthcare: the Italian health system is among the best in the world according to the WHO, and Umbertide has a hospital fifteen minutes from us. Pharmacies are everywhere and pharmacists are highly trained.
Cities where you should keep an eye on your bag: Rome, Florence, Naples — the usual European tourist pickpocketing triangle. None of these is Umbria. None of them is less than ninety minutes from us.

So: is Umbria safe?

By every internationally comparable measure, yes — and not just “safe enough”. Statistically, you’d have to leave Italy and head to a small Alpine province or the hills along the Slovenian border to find a region with a lower homicide rate. You’d have to cross nearly all of Europe to find a country with a lower rate than Italy’s. And you’d have to compare Umbria against a handful of microstates and Nordic countries to find a place in the developed world that’s meaningfully safer.

Travel choices in 2026 will likely involve more compromises than usual: cancelled routes, pricier tickets, destinations that have moved up or down the risk map in the past six months. The good news is that at least one variable is unusually reliable. A week in the Umbrian hills isn’t just one of the best holidays you can give yourselves — it is, looking at the numbers, one of the safest.

We can’t promise ourselves a perfect summer in 2026. We can promise ourselves a quiet one. Sometimes that’s the same thing.

Sources: ISTAT, “Le vittime di omicidio – Anno 2023” (20 November 2024), Figure 3 and related regional data from the I.Stat database (dati.istat.it), for regional homicide rates including Umbria; ISTAT, “Le vittime di omicidio – Anno 2024” (February 2026), for the 2024 national figure of 0.55 per 100,000; Eurostat, “Crime statistics” (2025 update) for EU averages; Office for National Statistics, “Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2024”; FBI, “Reported Crimes in the Nation 2024” (August 2025); CDC WONDER mortality database; Il Sole 24 Ore, “Indice della Criminalità” 2025 edition.