How much do people read? The 2025 ranking: a snapshot of reading in Italy.

According to the latest ranking drawn up by Amazon - referring to the period from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, and calculated on the basis of the number of books purchased per capita (both in paper and digital format) in cities with more than 50.000 inhabitants - the undisputed queen of the cities that read the most in Italy is Milan.

Pavia ranks second, with Padua climbing to third. The top 10 is followed, in order, by Bologna, Siena, Pisa, Florence, Cagliari, Rome, and Trieste. The 2025 ranking thus confirms a well-established trend: Milan has led the way among book lovers in Italy for years.

What Italians' tastes tell us

In addition to identifying which cities read the most, the survey also tracks preferred genres and most purchased titles, outlining some traits of the "collective psychology of readers." Literature and fiction top the list, followed by educational and reference texts, detective stories and thrillers, psychological essays, and historical fiction.

The best-selling titles in 2025 are:

1. The God of Our Fathers by Aldo Cazzullo — a work that approaches the Bible like a great novel.
2. The Song of the Rebel Hearts by Thrity Umrigar.
3. Tatà by Valérie Perrin.
4. The Past is a Dead Man Without a Corpse by Antonio Manzini.
5. Like Milena Palminteri's bitter orange.

This variety—between “classic” fiction, contemporary fiction, education, history, and thrillers—shows how reading continues to be experienced not only as entertainment, but also as reflection, knowledge, and escape.

The gap between North and South: an open issue

This ranking also highlights a geographical disparity: in the Central and Northern regions, the percentage of adults who read is higher than in the South and the Islands. In practice, in the top ten, only Cagliari represents the South, while all the other cities are in the North, with the exception of Rome. Furthermore, according to a 2025 report, 77% of people over 15 in Central and Northern Italy read (books, ebooks, or audiobooks), compared to 62% in the South and the Islands.

This imbalance suggests that reading in Italy is not a uniformly distributed habit, but a phenomenon strongly influenced by territorial context, cultural infrastructure, and social dynamics.