Culture drives Italian tourism; the lure of art cities, villages, hidden territories, museums and archaeological sites captivates national and international travelers. This is what emerges from the 22nd Federculture Annual Report, titled Culture Enterprise: The Culture that Changes the Territories, presented in Rome: the edition analyzed the 2025 data, measuring how cultural heritage impacts tourism and the economy.
The data on cultural tourism in the Federculture Report
The numbers confirm the rebound. In 2025 Italy registered 476.4 million tourist stays, with an increase of 2.2% compared to the previous year and a 9.8% rise against 2019, before the pandemic. The point, however, is not only how much tourism has grown.
The majority of overnight stays is, in fact, concentrated in a small group of destinations. There are 1,024 municipalities classified as areas with cultural and landscape vocation: they represent about 13% of the national total, but gather the 63% of Italy’s tourist stays.
It’s not only about Rome, Florence, Venice or the other well-known cities. The group also includes smaller centers, areas characterized by multiple forms of tourism and towns where the cultural dimension coexists with natural, spiritual or gastronomic aspects. Yet the gap remains. Some destinations must manage a rising number of visitors, while others struggle to gain visibility.
International tourism chooses cultural destinations
The foreign presence is one of the most evident elements of the report. In cultural territories international visitors represent over 55% of tourist traffic. The share rises to 58% in municipalities with a predominant cultural vocation and reaches 73% in large cities.
International urban tourism, according to the analyses reported by Federculture, has grown to such a scale that it now surpasses tourism tied to traditional seaside destinations. A transformation that also changes how people travel.
Cities are visited year-round, not only in the summer months, and attract an audience willing to travel for a show, a concert, a historic anniversary or the opening of a new cultural space. Growth, however, brings with it the challenge of managing flows that at certain times of the year cause crowding and the issue of short-term rentals.
The future of urban regeneration
One of the most interesting sections of the report concerns urban regeneration. Federculture examined projects supported through a Ministry of the Interior program linked to the PNRR. About one in five interventions includes a cultural component.
Libraries, former factories, theaters, historic buildings and public spaces are being restored with the aim of returning them to the communities. According to Bonisoli, these data reveal an underappreciated potential: culture can reactivate abandoned places and create new forms of participation, provided that the transformation goes beyond mere construction work.
After restoration, however, staff and resources are needed to keep the revived projects alive. Alongside regeneration, the analysis identifies all the tools useful to broaden the geography of cultural tourism by leveraging festivals, the spiritual link with the network of paths, abbeys, sanctuaries and more. These opportunities help ease the pressure on the most frequented destinations by promoting inland and lesser-known areas.
