2025 statistics of European and North American airport city systems

[New Brisavoine]

The city of Milan (182 km²) had 701,411 inhabitants in 1911 when the city of Rome (1,287 km²) had only 511,076 inhabitants. This is really the core of Milan, not a conurbation, whereas the municipal territory of Rome included large expanses of countryside with dozens of villages. If we took 1,287 km² around Milan, we would find even more inhabitants and a larger gap with Rome.

Even compared to Lyon, France's 2nd largest city, Rome wasn't all that big. At the 1881 census, there were 268,922 inhabitants in the city of Rome vs 584,185 in 1,287 km² around the center of Lyon. Even in 1911 after 40 years of being the capital city of Italy and having experienced much faster growth than Lyon, the city of Rome had as I've said 511,076 inhabitants whereas the 1,287 km² of Lyon had 723,754 inhabitants.