page_title: Languages of Switzerland
section_title: Italian
hierarchical_section_title: Languages of Switzerland / National languages and linguistic regions / Italian
caption_attribution_description: A map of the Italian-speaking areas of the Swiss Confederation.
context_page_description: The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh. All but Romansh maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation. In some situations, Latin is used, particularly as a single language to denote the country.
  In 2017, the population of Switzerland was 62.6% native speakers of German; 22.9% French; 8.2% Italian; and 0.5% Romansh. The German region is roughly in the east, north and center; the French part in the west and the Italian area in the south. There remains a small Romansh-speaking native population in Graubünden in the east. The cantons of Fribourg, Bern and Valais are officially bilingual; the canton of Graubünden is officially trilingual.
context_section_description: Italian Switzerland (Italian: Svizzera italiana, Romansh: Svizra taliana, French: Suisse italienne, German: italienische Schweiz) is the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, which includes the canton of Ticino and the southern part of Grisons. Italian is also spoken in the Gondo Valley (leading to the Simplon Pass, on the southern part of the watershed) in Valais.
  The linguistic region covers an area approximately 3,500 km² and has a total population of around 350,000 inhabitants, with the number of Italophones residing in Switzerland being 545,274 (about 7% of the Swiss population).
  The proportion of Italian-speaking inhabitants had been decreasing since the 1970s, after reaching a high of 12% of the population during the same decade. This was entirely because of the reduced number of immigrants from Italy to Switzerland, but gained again during the last decade.
caption: A map showing the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland: darker areas indicate where Italian is most prominent
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