Milan, Bologna, Rome. Three university cities compared

Uniflat opens in April 2027 in three cities at once: Milan, Bologna and Rome. They are three of Italy’s largest university cities, and they are very different from each other. Here’s how they look, with the official numbers.

How many students come from elsewhere

The Ministry of University counts students by the province where their course is based and the province where they finished school. In the 2024/25 academic year:

• Milan: 191,656 students, of whom 137,074 finished school in another province or abroad. 72%
• Bologna: 65,386 students, of whom 51,151 from elsewhere. 78%, the highest share of the three
• Rome: 209,402 students, of whom 101,840 from elsewhere. 49%

Rome has the most students overall, but a large part comes from the city itself and its province. Bologna is the opposite: few students compared with Rome and Milan, but almost all of them come from another part of Italy or the world. Milan sits in between, with nearly three students in four from elsewhere.

What renting costs

The Revenue Agency publishes the average rent of new contracts every year. For short-term subsidised contracts, the regulated-rent short leases that include student ones, in 2025 the average annual rent for whole homes was:

• Milan: 182.9 euros per square metre
• Rome: 142.5 euros per square metre
• Bologna: 87 euros per square metre

Careful with Bologna, though: there, as in Milan, these contracts are a tiny part of the market, around 0.5% of rented homes, despite the large student population. Most students rent at market conditions, which are higher.

On rooms, the most recent figures cover Rome and Milan. In the third quarter of 2025, 4,915 rooms were rented to students on a subsidised contract in Rome, with total rent up 19.5% in a year. In Milan 1,073, with total rent up 26.1%.

How the universities are spread out

• Milan has universities across the whole city: Politecnico in Città Studi and Bovisa, Bocconi near Ticinese, Bicocca to the north, Statale between the centre and Città Studi. The area you live in decides how much time you spend on public transport
• Bologna has its main faculties concentrated between Via Zamboni, Belle Arti and Mascarella: home and university are often a few minutes’ walk apart
• Rome has campuses very far apart: Sapienza in San Lorenzo, Roma Tre between Ostiense and San Paolo, Tor Vergata to the south east, LUISS in Parioli

That’s why Uniflat also considers the distance between the areas you’re looking in: in Rome, two perfectly compatible people studying at opposite ends of the city would struggle to find a home that suits both.

What they have in common

Three different cities, the same problem. Every year thousands of students arrive from elsewhere, look for a room at the same time and meet their flatmates only when they move in. That’s where we start.

Sources

1. Students enrolled «In Sede/Fuori Sede», 2010/11 to 2024/25 (file 14c)Italian Ministry of University and Research, Statistics Office, accessed on 29 September 2026
2. Real Estate Report 2026, Residential sectorItalian Revenue Agency, Real Estate Market Observatory (OMI), accessed on 29 September 2026
3. Quarterly statistics, Residential, Q3 2025Italian Revenue Agency, Real Estate Market Observatory (OMI), accessed on 29 September 2026