page_title: Naples
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Naples / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: English: vista del centro storico di napoli, dalle colline a nord est.
context_page_description: Naples is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 967,069 within the city's administrative limits as of 2017. Its province-level municipality is the third-most populous metropolitan area in Italy with a population of 3,115,320 residents, and its continuously built-up metropolitan area is the second-most populous metropolitan area in Italy and the 7th-most populous urban area in the European Union.
  First settled by Greeks in the first millennium BC, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. In the ninth century BC, a colony known as Parthenope or Παρθενόπη was established on the Island of Megaride. In the 6th century BC, it was refounded as Neápolis. The city was an important part of Magna Graecia, played a major role in the merging of Greek and Roman society, and was a significant cultural centre under the Romans.
  It served as the capital of the Duchy of Naples, then of the Kingdom of Naples, and finally of the Two Sicilies until the unification of Italy in 1861.
context_section_description: As of 2012, the population of the comune di Napoli totals around 960,000. Naples' wider metropolitan area, sometimes known as Greater Naples, has a population of approximately 4.4 million. The demographic profile for the Neapolitan province in general is relatively young: 19% are under the age of 14, while 13% are over 65, compared to the national average of 14% and 19%, respectively. Naples has a higher percentage of females (52.5%) than males (47.5%). Naples currently has a higher birth rate than other parts of Italy, with 10.46 births per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.
  The city's population rose from 621,000 in 1901 to 1,226,000 in 1971, before declining to 957,811 in 2011 as city-dwellers moved to the suburbs. According to different sources, Naples' metropolitan area is either the second-most-populated metropolitan area in Italy after Milan (with 4,434,136 inhabitants according to Svimez Data) or the third (with 3.1 million inhabitants according to the OECD). In addition, Naples is Italy's most densely populated major city, with approximately 8,182 people per square kilometre; however, it has seen a notable decline in population density since 2003, when the figure was over 9,000 people per square kilometre.
  In contrast to many northern Italian cities, there are relatively few foreign immigrants in Naples; 94.3% of the city's inhabitants are Italian nationals. In 2017, there were a total of 58,203 foreigners in the city of Naples; the majority of these are mostly from Sri Lanka, China, Ukraine, Pakistan and Romania. Statistics show that, in the past, the vast majority of immigrants in Naples were female; this happened because male immigrants in Italy tended to head to the wealthier north.
caption: Urban density in central Naples
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