Italy is a medium-sized European country: it covers about 301,000 square kilometers (around 116,000 square miles), making it roughly the size of the U.S. state of Arizona or New Mexico.

Quick Scoop

  • Total area: about 301,000–302,000 km² (≈116,000–116,600 sq mi).
  • Land vs water: roughly 294,000 km² land and 7,000 km² water.
  • Ranking: around the 10th-largest country in Europe by area and roughly 70‑something in the world by size.
  • Shape: the classic “boot” peninsula plus large islands like Sicily and Sardinia.

How that feels in practice

  • Compared to the USA , Italy is about 1/32 the size of the United States.
  • If it were a U.S. state, it would be in the same size ballpark as Arizona or New Mexico , around the 5th-largest state by area.
  • It has a long coastline of about 7,600 km (4,700+ miles), which is a lot of sea for a country of this size.

Tiny extras

  • The broader “Italian geographical region” (including bits of neighboring countries and microstates like San Marino, Vatican City, Monaco, etc.) is a bit larger, around 324,000 km².

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.