Sicily has the Italian city with the highest average monthly sunshine hours, but in fifth place is Genoa, according to a ranking of Italy's top 50 locations put together by Holidu, a vacation rental search and booking platform. The city with the most hours of sunshine was Syracuse with 346.83, which precedes Catania with 346.78 by very few decimal places.

They are both followed with 344.52 by the cities on either side of the Strait between Sicily and Calabria, with Messina preceding Reggio Calabria only by virtue of the methodology that in equal hours of sunshine gives precedence to the most populous city.

In fifth place, the first northern city in the ranking, on the other hand, is Genoa, demonstrating that Liguria, with its mild climate, is not outdone by many places in the south, with an impressive 344.03 hours of average monthly sunshine. In the next positions to complete the top 10 are Cagliari, Taranto and Palermo.

That being in the north does not necessarily mean having little sunshine is confirmed by the presence of Bolzano in ninth place: with an impressive 337.87 hours of average monthly sunshine, the Trentino-South Tyrol city is the second northern Italian city in the ranking ahead of many southern locations. Trento is 22nd with 328.02 hours of sunshine.

Rome ranks a good 14th with 335.48 hours of sunshine, preceding Naples in 15th by about two hours. Bari 17th with 332 hours is two places ahead of Turin, which is 19th with 331.32 hours. And Milan? We have to scroll to the bottom of the ranking to find the city of the Madunina: with 313.39 hours it stands, in fact, in 39th place.

Even lower is Florence, even 42nd. At the bottom of the ranking, Campobasso is among the non-Northerns the lowest with 313.75 hours and in 36th place. The bottom 5 sees Udine with 304 hours ahead of Trieste with 302. Bologna breaks through the low 300-hour mark with 298, one hour more than Forlì. Aosta closes the ranking: in the capital of Val d'Aosta the average monthly sunshine hours are only 248, a full 48 less than the penultimate city, and even 98 less than the 'queen' Syracuse.

The ranking was compiled by extracting the average number of hours of sunshine per month in each city for the years 2009 to 2021 available on the World Weather Online website. The 50 largest Italian cities were taken under consideration: the 47 most populous with the addition of the three regional capitals not represented among the first 47 already selected, namely Potenza for Basilicata, Campobasso for Molise and Aosta for Valle d'Aosta, so as to represent as much as possible the entire national territory.