Siena tops quality-of-life charts

Siena has topped an influential ranking of quality of life across Italy which confirmed a wide North-South gap and showed the worst overall results in six years.

Siena rose from 6th last year to overtake the two far-north provinces which have dominated the rankings in the last few years, Trento and Bolzano.

Agrigento in Sicily was 103rd and last, down from 98th last year, below another Sicilian city, Enna (down from 94th to 102nd), and Naples, up from 102nd to 101st.

Among the big gainers, Rome leaped from 58th to 29th.

Bari also made a surprising move, leaping out of the southern-dominated bottom half to claim 48th place compared to last year's 84th.

The survey by the Italia Oggi daily is based on eight factors, which have equal weight: jobs/business life; environment/green living; crime; social problems; population; services; leisure; and living standards.

Compared to last year, researchers found a ''stable'' quality of life in the North-East, Centre and South but a ''collapse'' in the North-West where the economic crisis has hit particularly hard.

Turin's fall from 38th to 50th was indicative of this, analysts said.

Overall, Italia Oggi noted that 55 out of 103 provinces showed ''poor or unsatisfactory'' quality of life, the worst finding in the last six years.

Here are the 2008 results for major provinces, compared to last year: